


Uproot

by BeetlesMcGee



Category: Naruto
Genre: Anti-Konoha, BAMF Haruno Sakura, But Without A Kekkei Genkai, Chakra Theory, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 Have Issues (Naruto), Gen, Hatake Kakashi Is Trying, Hatake Kakashi focuses on Sakura, May get dark later, Mokuton User Haruno Sakura, Strong Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke Being an Asshole, Unrequited Crush, an exploration of the consequences of inventing something that shouldn't be possible, you'll see why - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeetlesMcGee/pseuds/BeetlesMcGee
Summary: In a twist of grand irony, the unassuming little girl who learned to weave her chakra into flowers and saplings would be the one to send the whole forest crashing down.All would be uprooted, and all because of a single girl's discovery of a power that they'd never thought could be hers.In the end, perhaps only the girl would be left standing tall.  Perhaps she'd be cut down too.  Perhaps she'd resolve to start a forest all her own.Only time would tell.Alternatively:  Feeling weak and afraid after Wave, Sakura stumbles upon a way to use Mokuton.  Without a bloodline.  Without any gene mutations.  Self-taught. Konoha is flipped on its head, and there are many, many questions to be asked in the face of a little girl doing the "impossible".
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura & Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 109
Kudos: 642





	1. Prologue:  Germination

**Author's Note:**

> So, this came about because I was thinking about my mixed feelings on Mokuton Sakura fics. On one hand, Sakura being cool and special is fun to read, but on the other hand, I feel like Mokuton often defeats a lot of the purpose of her character. It’s an extremely special ability, but Sakura’s not really supposed to be as inherently special as Sasuke or Naruto. A lot of her struggle and depth is about learning to accept and overcome that.
> 
> Now, if an author’s perfectly aware of this and simply decides “screw it, she’s a main character so she gets to be more special anyway,” that’s cool. I’m down for that kind of decision too. But I just wanted to take it in a bit of a different direction.
> 
> So, I hit upon this fic idea as a way to reconcile and explore this, by centering the fact that she’s not supposed to be this special as a major point of the story, instead of just getting rid of it.
> 
> How would everyone actually react if some underestimated nobody kid without any special heritage figured out her own method to replicate one of the most legendary kekkei genkai? How would they really feel about her? What would this mean for their understanding of the world? What is there to imply and extrapolate from a development like this? What kind of things could it inspire? What would it mean for the way they teach, and their preconceived notions of talent? What about the way their hierarchies are structured? Those are the kinds of questions I wanted to be asking and trying to answer.

  
It was not a great master plan, lovingly crafted by a shrewd genius.   
  
It was not years upon years of meticulous research by a well-funded team in a cutting-edge laboratory.   
  
It was not a grand, reckless, ambitious declaration to defy destiny itself.   
  
It was only a girl.   
  
A little girl, small and afraid, clinging to whatever she could in the strained hope that she could do even just the barest bit more for those she cared for.   
  
At the core of it all, that was what ultimately changed the very face of the ninja world.   
  
In the wake of her disastrous first C-Rank mission, Sakura had three realizations.   
  
One, that she was weak.   
  
Two, that she was a coward when it mattered most.   
  
Three… that despite those things, she still didn’t want to give up.   
  
The realization was not nearly as grand as it sounded. In a twist of irony, the thing that would shake the world’s foundations still sprung from a decision of compromise. Of capitulation. Of a girl following a path she didn’t even necessarily want, simply because it was the only thing that felt feasible.   
  
Sakura decided to study healing, purely because she no longer had the confidence to believe she could truly fight. She was willing to firmly root herself to the sidelines forever, if it meant helping those important to her.   
  
The next step towards the great shift was more of a stumble, than anything. Yet another compromise. Another soft decision. Another thin, shaky hope.   
  
Sakura was too kind, too afraid to practice her medical ninjutsu on animals, as the books truly called for. There was no one around to teach her. Konoha’s medical system was stretched all too thin. A ramshackle thing, worn out and depleted, far past its glory days. It was holding together almost purely through spit and hope.    
  
As it so often was for Sakura, books were her only guide, her only solace.   
  
So, she decided she would start with plants. Plants did not feel. Did not writhe in discomfort. Could not judge, could not be let down, could not reprimand. In those regards, they were perfect.    
  
It was a decision of pure, innocent ignorance. Had anyone bothered to tell her anything, they would’ve told her not to start with plants. Too different from animals. The very structure of the cells was a significant departure.   
  
But Sakura was a girl who went largely ignored. Her sensei, her parents, her crush… it was nothing new to her. It wasn’t like she really deserved much of their attention anyway, she’d decided. Not if she was the kind of person who’d stand around helplessly while her friends and her teacher were in mortal peril. Not if it was honestly kind of her own fault that Ino became her rival. Sakura knew she’d been the first to suggest that they somehow couldn’t be friends just because of Sasuke.   
  
The books only gave instructions for animals in particular, but never told her not to start with plants. So, that was just what Sakura did.   
  
There were setbacks, again approached in sheer, open-minded ignorance of typical convention. The books weren’t telling her how to handle plants specifically, so of course she needed to collect what useful information she could and simply improvise. It seemed obvious to her.   
  
Many plants were mostly water, so of course it made sense to go through that painstaking process of learning to unlock Suiton. She’d been told she had incredible chakra control, after all. Even with her shattered confidence, it seemed like a logical step. There was no one to burst her bubble with the knowledge that it could take several months to learn, a knowledge that her bruised, shaky ego probably wouldn’t have been able to bear.   
  
No one to dissuade her on the grounds that proper medical ninjutsu didn’t need Suiton. She didn’t even realize. It made total sense, in her mind. Water was so integral to life. Being able to generate water could lead to being able to hydrate cells and stimulate blood production.   
  
No one to dissuade her on the grounds that she wouldn’t have the chakra to effectively use too much elemental ninjutsu, either. She disregarded that issue. She only needed enough to rehydrate plant matter and provide the moisture content for more cellular material to be made. It seemed like the next logical step, so she simply did it. It only took a couple of weeks.   
  
That was how she began to learn how to restore withered plants. How to pulse chakra through them with a gentle rhythm, how to match their energy, how to time her chakra just right to saturate their cells and only then shift to water, smoothly and gently enough that there would be no damage, and scarcely any excess moisture being generated.   
  
She did not regard it as a particularly great accomplishment. There was no praise. There was no acknowledgement. No one who even noticed she was doing it. Not a thought spared for the actual use of a rejuvenator of plants if it wasn’t for combat. No historical instances of care given to all the implications for farming, for food supply, for increasing crop yields, for the easier cultivation of rare and important medicines and antidotes. There was just a lone girl in a dusty corner of a library, who now possessed the ability to make a drooping beanstalk perk up again.   
  
Somehow, those things simply seemed too finicky and superfluous for a society so busy always worrying about the next big fight. Fearing it, and yet constantly glorifying it. Claiming it wants to avoid it, yet trying to gear up to win it nonetheless.   
  
For Sakura, the next logical step seemed to be Doton. If plants grew in the earth, it simply seemed reasonable that they would be more receptive to earthen chakra. That she could use it for stimulating mineral production, or for encouraging them to take up energy from her own hands. For creating chakra-enriched soils.   
  
She tackled it, tiresome as it was, for the same reasons she saw fit to tackle Suiton. Decisions borne of an innocent ignorance, and a pure desire to  _ keep trying,  _ even when things seemed uncertain.   
  
That yielded its own results.   
  
Plants could grow faster with earth chakra being carefully pulsed through them too, as painstaking as the process was. It was still so slow, but Sakura was somewhat excited about it. With a few minutes of great concentration, she could make a withered twig rehydrate and begin steadily budding in her grasp.   
  
There was one last hurdle though.    
  
Sakura needed a better method of genuine  _ repair.  _ _  
_ _  
_ Rejuvenated plants left dry, browning, or sickly too long underwent enough damage that they still weren’t exactly the same after Sakura was done with them. Twigs bolstered by her chakra were given only a faded facsimile of their former vigor, never to be as healthy as before, not unless they’d hardly been separated from the tree for long. Browned leaves never regained their full green, only doing so in part before they’d simply die again within days.   
  
She would need to use both types of chakra at the same time, smoothly, she reasoned. But that was a tall order. It was like trying to push in two different directions at the same time, or like trying to do a typical two-handed task with only one. Calling up two different elemental chakras simultaneously was a nightmare.   
  
But fittingly enough, the plants gave Sakura her answer. Not quite literally, of course, or with any agency on their part, but she’d learned that they could be surprisingly helpful for understanding all kinds of things, if only you paid enough attention.   
  
Did  _ they  _ only ever absorb water or minerals for their use at the very moment they were needed? No. It could be stored and regulated more dynamically than that. They could manage such things without even having brains. Of course she could do something similar.   
  
Why try to summon two different elements up at precisely the same time, exactly when needed? And why try to treat them as if they were so separate? They were both from her body, after all. Instead of trying to split her attention into guiding and shaping both of them separately, she could simply save some trouble and have them act upon each other, once she got around the issues of calling them both up at once.

  
The chakra of the Suiton nature flowed so freely, but it also took paths of least resistance. A person’s chakra circulatory system was something designed for constant flow, as was water. As was chakra that mimicked the properties. So, the first iteration of the plan didn’t yield much success, the Suiton proving difficult to “keep in place” long enough to properly focus on Doton. As it turned out, it was much easier to just start with Doton first. Denser and more sluggish, much easier to compact together and leave in place within her system until it was needed.   
  
Then, Suiton’s more free-flowing nature could work to her advantage, pumping through her system and mixing with the more stubborn Doton to encourage it to simply flow along with it. Both arrived where needed at precisely the same time. Effectively, it felt almost like she was just doing Suiton, making things much easier because the Doton chakra was just being ‘carried’ by it. It kept her from having to focus so much seperate attention on it. If she desired a smoother blend of the two, or a change in concentrations, she just had to circulate the chakra a bit longer and more vigorously, while also applying the proper focus. Once she had them mixed, they were easier to keep in place too, easier to “set aside” until she could prepare more of whichever chakra she needed to alter the balance.   
  
The first time she succeeded in her new methodology, injecting a sprig of a simple garden-variety flower with her blend of Doton and Suiton and her budding knowledge of medical ninjutsu theory, the difference was palpable. A great outgrowth of new leaves and a burst of new roots from the stem, even a couple of smaller flowers then eagerly trying to stretch their way up from their newly intact base of growth.   
  
It was interesting, but still not exactly what she’d been looking for. She hadn’t actually commanded any of that to happen, she’d simply given the plant her carefully-blended chakra and watched it respond on its own. Broken and torn plants still weren’t exactly repaired in the way she wanted, either.   
  
From there, it seemed obvious that the answer was to refine the control… and her method of mixing her two chakra natures was unrefined. What she effectively had was a “muddy” variant of Suiton. Relying on it to carry her Doton meant that the Doton chakra wasn’t getting much attention, and therefore was still too coarse and poorly molded. She needed to intertwine the two more. Make them smoother, more inseparable. She also needed to match the signatures of the plants more.   
  
It was only because Sakura had originally set out to learn medical ninjutsu that she hit upon the next step in her experiments.   
  
Medical ninjutsu usually wasn’t about merely forcing the will and energy of your chakra to take command of a patient’s biology. It was about getting the patient’s own body and own chakra to meet you halfway. To do things neither side of the equation would accomplish alone. It was about synergy. Symbiosis.   
  
Sakura would just have to treat plants the same way.   
  
If her chakra couldn’t fully match them, that actually wasn’t the end of the world, she began to realize. She could already stimulate them. It meant that she was giving them energy that they were making their own. So if she just took that newly converted energy and used that, then it removed the burden of doing it herself.   
  
It was undoubtedly a tricky and time-consuming thing to learn, as Sakura found herself stuck on the step for a solid month, but she’d gotten to a point where she was completely entrenched. What was once just a temporary stopgap area of study for bridging the way to real medical ninjutsu had consumed her in its own right, especially as she became increasingly prone to using her studies as a way to escape life’s burdens. At least if her studies had problems, the answers were probably in a book somewhere, or at least easier to extrapolate from what the books taught her. Performing well in a quiet, controlled setting was easier than the hectic, exhausting, humiliating ordeal of physical and combat pursuits… and she hadn’t recovered from how Wave had damaged her confidence in the area even further.   
  
Eventually, she found the answer.   
  
She couldn’t just “grab hold” of the plant’s energy and try to command it directly. It was like the Doton and Suiton step all over again. Instead of trying to use her willpower alone to wield that energy as it was, she had to steadily push and guide the energy with her  _ own  _ chakra, and blend it all together. With that, she had a form of chakra that finally appeared to achieve absolute compatibility with whatever plant material she worked with.    
  
It was such a rush that she actually forgot all about her original plans to become a healer. She was just too enraptured by her ability to command plants. It was still pretty small scale, and still kind of slow and tiring, but still. She could make flowers sprout and bloom from the ground just by concentrating. She could immediately graft plant tissues together and perfectly repair torn stems and leaves. She could make seeds become saplings as she held them in her hands. 

Not just that, but she could actually influence how they grew  _ specifically _ , something that was completely out of her hands only a month prior. How could she not be excited? She could  _ finally  _ do something that actually felt special, and not have to have it be immediately undermined… like what happened when Kakashi praised her for her chakra control, only to just use it to pit the boys against each other and then not bother teaching her anything else. He’d had that whole week to help her learn something else, and he hadn’t done  _ anything... _   
  
But Sakura’s new triumph was a good distraction from that sting. Her methodology had a bit of an issue when it came to fully dead plant matter, or situations with her being separated from plants to use, but even that could be pretty easily circumvented. The converted chakra she collected from living plant cells could be redirected and applied to any other plant material once she had it. And she could use the technique to sustain their life beyond natural expectations quite easily. So, she just had to keep a starting supply of living plant material on hand at all times. It wasn’t actually asking for much.   
  
Sakura’s solution was to simply take a bit of a cherry blossom tree and fashion a loop of living wood into a small, simplistic ring for her to wear. For an added touch, she forced the little ring to permanently sport a single cherry blossom. Besides that, she also took a couple of branches and then merged and re-shaped them into a reasonably sturdy staff, again with some permanent blossoms tastefully arranged on it for decoration. It wasn’t much, but it was free, and she could regrow or replace it ad-nauseum. She could also use it for practicing with seeing if she could make plant material harder and stronger, too. For good measure, she even took to carrying a handful of seeds on her person at all times. Again, simple, free, and highly replaceable. 

Sakura was so excited she even had the courage to go show Kakashi, figuring he’d be appreciative.   
  
So, after one of Team 7’s training sessions, she did just that.

* * *

  
She got Kakashi to stay behind for a moment after training was done, privately wanting only him to see it first just in case she messed up and embarrassed herself in front of Sasuke... Or in case Naruto decided to do something stupid and mess up her concentration.   
  
He looked kind of bored with her at first, eyes half-lidded, hands casually in his pockets, stance slightly slouched, in a way that kind of pissed her off. But she soothed herself with the reminder that Kakashi often looked bored and aloof anyway. It was best to work with plants when you were calm and focused.   
  
With that in mind, Sakura held out her sakura staff in front of her, vertically, with both hands, and closed her eyes in concentration, doing her best to pretend like not even Kakashi was there, to erase any doubt or performance anxiety.   
  
Within moments, the top end of the staff crudely sprouted into a mass of leafy, writhing branches.   
  
Sakura opened her eyes at the sound of Kakashi actually giving a subdued, but audible  _ gasp. _ _  
_ _  
_ “Sakura…” Kakashi said quietly, very carefully and deliberately, as if picking his next words with utmost care. She was shocked to see him reach up to expose his Sharingan, as he fixed her with the most intense gaze she’d ever received from him. “Do more of…  _ that,  _ please,” Kakashi said.   
  
“Um… sure?” Sakura replied, smiling nervously as she wondered what about it was getting such an intense reaction out of him. But since she didn’t want to keep him waiting, she obediently performed a small trick where she had the staff retract the branches and then become as flexible as a snake, before smoothly coiling itself around her arm. It was a slow process, and Sakura was worried that it looked kind of lame, but Kakashi just continued staring intently. He didn't blink even once as she crudely formed one end into a simplistic snake head, and the other tapered into a proper tail, just to enhance the imagery.

Finally, just when it was starting to get creepy to be so heavily scrutinized, Kakashi almost imperceptibly relaxed, leaned back a bit, and then covered his Sharingan again.   
  
“I see. So this isn’t a genjutsu. You’re seriously using Mokuton,” Kakashi said somberly.   
  
“Oh, that’s what it is?” Sakura asked. “I didn’t think it was all  _ that,  _ since it’s not anything strong or fancy like the stories about the First Hokage… I thought it was just… plant manipulation. You know, like how people can use Suiton to do stuff with ice, but it's not the same or as good as those ice powers Haku had?”   
  
Kakashi looked stricken. “You… you didn’t even  _ know?”  _ he asked. “Is this… didn’t you… don’t you have it as your kekkei genkai?”   
  
“Huh? No, Kakashi-sensei… I just… came up with it from studying in the library. It really took a while. I wouldn’t think a kekkei genkai would give me so many issues while I’m unlocking it. After all, Sasuke-kun’s Sharingan just kinda turned on, and in contrast, this was a whole process of trial and error…” Sakura replied. Was it really such a big deal?   
  
“...Sakura…” Kakashi said quietly, still looking stricken. “...Listen to me. I saw it. That was actual Mokuton chakra. I know. You… you can’t let anyone else know you can do this,” he said.   
  
That was exactly what Sakura  _ didn’t  _ want to hear.   
  
“What?!” she cried. “But-” She’d worked so hard! She’d studied, practiced, researched, and taken notes for  _ hours  _ on end, just about every single day! She’d holed up all alone until her stomach growled, her legs were asleep, and it was dark out, just to read more about plants and biology! Inner was fuming, but Kakashi stood firm.   
  
“No buts. I’m not doing this to be difficult. It’s for your own good. Sakura, the… there’ve only been two other people in history who can do this in any way. And the second, well… the matter was… complicated, for them,” Kakashi told her.    
  
“What does that have to do with me having to keep this a secret?!” Sakura cried. “I did this so I could help out more! That would ruin the whole point of it!”   
  
“Sakura, think about it. With the connotations this technique has, and who it’s associated with… I’m stunned that nobody’s confronted you about this while you were practicing it before,” Kakashi said.   
  
Sakura just shrugged at that, slumping her shoulders. “I’m alone a lot. It’s not really anything new,” she matter-of-factly admitted, already feeling defeated enough that she didn’t mind the shame of doing so.   
  
Kakashi seemed to be briefly at a loss for words before he found the will to continue speaking. “Well, not to be a downer, but none of the outcomes of making this public bode well. One would be that people rightfully assume that this ability is in your blood, and they start wanting to hunt you down, dead or alive. Another would be the consequences of them realizing it’s  _ not  _ genetic. The consequences of people realizing that theoretically,  _ more people  _ can figure this out. If our enemies ever realize that they can just… just  _ teach people to use Mokuton…” _ _  
_ _  
_ “That’s… that’s…” Sakura started. She was realizing, horrifyingly enough, that Kakashi kind of had a point, but… “That’s not fair!” she finished. “Other people get to have their cool special powers and still go on missions, even knowing people might come after them! But they do it anyway, because they know they’re strong enough that they can handle themselves!”   
  
Kakashi seemed to quietly understand that she was implicitly including him in that ‘other people’, but he didn’t say as much. He just tensed up a little more than otherwise necessary.   
  
“...I’ll be frank. You’re not ready for that kind of pressure,” Kakashi said quietly. Sakura went completely rigid, balling her fists as she internally warred between either screaming or crying. He could dress it up however he wanted, but he was basically just calling her weak, and they both knew it.   
  
“...But,” Kakashi continued firmly, looking her straight in the eyes. Sakura met his gaze even as she forced down the urge to yell at him, and ignored all the swears Inner was silently hurling at him. “I’m your sensei. And as your sensei… I can help you  _ become  _ ready,” Kakashi said, in a dead serious tone she rarely ever heard from him. She was gobsmacked. He was… acknowledging her? He was… seriously going to actually start paying more attention to her? Was she dreaming?   
  
“Sensei…” Sakura said, a smile steadily creeping on her face.   
  
“Don’t go thanking me yet. I’m not going to go easy on you, and I’m still not letting you use this power any time soon. My goal is to focus on building other skills for you, so that you won’t be tempted to use this before you’re truly ready. But… one day, I believe you should be able to choose whether or not to take the risk. When you’re truly prepared. And… I know it must be hard to hear, that I’m encouraging you to shelve this ability for the time being… but by the time you’re in a better position to take that risk, a lot of the improvements you’ll have made will actually feed into making you better with this ability,” Kakashi explained.   
  
Sakura did feel rather torn… it was basically a choice between the ability she’d worked so hard to figure out, or the attention and proper tutelage of her teacher. It felt… stifling. Patronizing. But maybe she was just being immature.   
  
Rationally, she knew what choice she’d have to make. It was simply all around more pragmatic to accept Kakashi’s deal. He wouldn’t keep her from doing it forever, and he made good points. Even if he wouldn’t be training her to use Mokuton better, she’d still end up indirectly learning things that would make her better at it later on. And she’d be stronger and more capable in general. Wasn’t that what she wanted? She’d be a fool to rebel out of nothing but hurt pride.

“Deal,” Sakura said simply.   
  
As she was met with one of Kakashi’s trademark crinkled eye-smiles in response, she silently wondered just how else her new skill would end up complicating her life…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, to clarify how exactly Sakura's methodology is different:
> 
> Essentially, she uses a bit of medical ninjutsu theory along with her high chakra control to pump energy into living plant material, which stimulates its life force and metabolic activity to make it like a “catalyst” she can use to make Mokuton chakra. Hashirama and Yamato don’t need the “catalyst” step, it’s natural for them.
> 
> Everyone else’s problem is that the option to do it this way has literally just never occurred to them, and if it has they never succeeded. The fact that this is really an accidental tangent of trying to learn medical ninjutsu is a major factor in its success.
> 
> Everyone else would be focused on thinking of this as “control” and “power” and “Being like Hashirama”, while Sakura approached it from the framework of “healing” and “assisting”. I just think it’s real funny that such a massive breakthrough was possible because for once, it came from a mindset of cooperation and nurture.
> 
> She’s also not actually OP at all just yet. Her skills are otherwise the same, if not actually a little worse, because she has so far spent almost all of her time and effort post-Wave on researching this. This is basically a prologue.
> 
> As a heads up, although Sakura does become powerful as things progress, this story is meant to have a bit of a pessimistic and anti-Konoha bent. So, it’s not all good times. On the bright side, she’ll get a lot more of Kakashi’s attention. I considered him being a dick about this too, but I prefer him as just kinda in over his head, but well-meaning.
> 
> I have no intention of this ever becoming Kakasaku, but I do like the idea of a close platonic bond with Kakashi.


	2. Chapter 1: Take Root

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sakura's training with Kakashi properly begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit you guys, this is the fastest I've ever gotten this many kudos on anything! Thank you so much for supporting this little idea of mine.

Sakura laid face down on the ground, in one of the most remote forest training grounds she and Kakashi could find. It was far enough that reaching it was training in itself. Both the situation and location had become commonplace for her over the last three weeks. She’d just spent the last hour doing tree-leaping laps at an uncomfortably fast pace, and her legs felt like they were trying to murder her.

Kakashi really didn’t lie when he said that his training wouldn’t be easy. She almost wished she could go back to him not knowing about the Mokuton, because the fact that she’d shown it to him had apparently given him way higher standards for her. Infuriatingly, he wasn’t even tired in the least.

But… at the same time, she still didn’t want to quit.

As much as he liked to push her limits… it was nice, spending time with him.

He’d even started bringing lunches and taking her out to get food when they were done, ever since the day where he asked what she’d eaten that day and he apparently hadn’t been satisfied with her paltry answer, because he’d just stared for a moment and then flatly gone “Well then…”.

He’d managed to convince her to eat more lean protein and healthy carbs from then on, and stop trying to restrict calories, although it’d been embarrassing to admit that she was doing it for Sasuke… Kakashi had been quick to remind her that Sasuke had never actually asked her to diet, and that a real ninja didn’t indulge in baseless rumors. He’d also told her that even if Sasuke really did tell her to diet, she should never actually listen.

She was grateful for it in ways she wouldn’t admit. It wasn’t as if her father had ever shown that level of concern with what she ate, or ever given her even that much advice on boys… It was really saying something to ever even see him actually come home.

Sakura was distracted by the sound of Kakashi’s carefree voice. “Ah, Sakura, haven’t you been getting your beauty sleep?” Kakashi lightly teased, as Sakura just lightly groaned from her position on the ground. 

“I… p-please, just give a minute,” she grumbled.

“Fine. But we’re doing all of this to increase your stamina and your chakra reserves, you know. You’re behind in those areas. And besides physical energy, chakra is also your mental energy. So, I have to make it hard on my cute little genin for the sake of your discipline and willpower,” Kakashi told her.

“Just because I know that doesn’t make it not suck,” Sakura grumbled quietly enough that she thought Kakashi wouldn’t hear.

“Exactly,” Kakashi replied, all too cheerfully. “But… I do wonder. Your parents are ninja, aren’t they? Even if they’re not particularly high ranking, from what I’ve gathered,” Kakashi continued.

“...They are,” Sakura replied, feeling her stomach knot for a moment.

“If I may ask, shouldn’t they have been helping you with your physical conditioning more?” Kakashi asked.

Sakura bit her lip. “Oh, um… I think I’ve caught my breath now! We can keep training now, Kakashi-sensei!” 

Kakashi couldn’t possibly not notice the incredibly obvious deflection. Anyone with a brain could, let alone a ninja. But he wasn’t nosy enough to push for answers. Unfortunately, a ninja with a difficult family life was nothing special. And Sakura spent nearly every day doing extra training with him, never saying anything about any friends or family she’d rather be spending time with…

For all of her supposed “normalcy” compared to the boys on the team, wasn’t she actually a bit like them after all? All three of them, lonely and isolated…

Kakashi put those thoughts aside for later as he just gave Sakura an evil grin from behind his mask. If she was going to hide behind training as an excuse to stay quiet, might as well make the training “fun” for her.

“Alright. That’s enough jumping through the trees for today, though,” Kakashi said. He waited for the sigh of relief before he continued with the little ‘catch’ he’d decided on. “Because now I want 100 push-ups!” he said, all too cheerily. Sakura once again groaned.

After a lot of panting and struggling and suffering through Kakashi’s general playful sadism, a question came to Sakura’s exhausted mind. One she’d thought of before, from time to time, but been too distracted or too focused to openly voice.

“Kakashi-sensei… Shouldn’t I tell Naruto and Sasuke-kun about Mokuton?” Sakura quietly asked, after she'd finally finished and gone to sit beneath a shady tree on the edge of the training area.

“...” Kakashi was silent.

He’d thought about the question she was posing before, but… he didn’t know how his other two students would take the news of her new ability. Both showed signs of being somewhat insecure in certain ways, as much as they tried to hide it. Kakashi had known Itachi personally. It couldn’t have been good for Sasuke to grow up under pressure as overwhelming as that.

Naruto would probably be good about it, he was already fond of Sakura anyway.

But Sasuke…

Kakashi really wasn’t sure. And he definitely knew it would be completely alienating and unfair to tell one of them and not the other.

He was already starting to question if maybe he’d been too lenient with letting Naruto and Sasuke’s rivalry go on as it was. It was like they’d taken a few steps back since Wave, relationship-wise. Did he really want Sasuke getting even more upset about Sakura accomplishing some rare, special thing that he didn’t have personally?

Worse, Sasuke might want to know how she did it... and as much as Kakashi admired the boy’s skill, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to let that happen. In fact, the boy’s skill was exactly what had him so worried that it _could_ happen… If there were to be a Uchiha suddenly using the abilities of one of the most revered Senju… politically speaking, he felt like there were people who _really_ wouldn’t like that.

And once Sasuke understood the power’s full potential, he’d want to use it with an intensity that Kakashi was sure would totally surpass Sakura. It’d be much harder to get him to keep it a secret.  
  
“ Kakashi-sensei?” Sakura asked, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Are you listening?”  
  
“It’s… probably better that your teammates don’t know about your new ability either, for now,” Kakashi said, hesitating slightly. A little part of him was telling him that he might be making the wrong choice… but then again, it certainly seemed like the safer and easier choice for the time being. A cold, pragmatic part of him was also telling him that if the other boys ever got kidnapped and interrogated, that would be two less people potentially capable of putting the information in enemy hands.

“But… shouldn’t teammates always trust each other?” Sakura asked. “Knowing each other’s abilities helps us cooperate, doesn’t it?”

“Well… there are things you still don’t know about Naruto and Sasuke either, aren’t there?” Kakashi replied. “For good reason, too. Besides, this isn’t forever, and you’ll still be able to work together just fine. You’ll have other things you can fall back on, and this would also reduce the chance of getting into a hectic situation where the others are trying to pressure you into using Mokuton when it isn’t safe to do so,” Kakashi told her, hoping it was a good enough explanation.

“I guess so…” Sakura responded.

“Well… since you’ll need other skills to be able to avoid Mokuton without being a sitting duck… What was it that you felt interested in doing?” Kakashi asked. “I have noticed that your chakra control would make a for a good genjutsu specialist… And for your size and level of practice, your physical strength is actually surprisingly good.”

“Well… I learned Mokuton because I actually started off trying to teach myself healing… and I didn’t want to hurt animals, so I went with plants,” Sakura explained, looking down at the ground a bit shyly.

Kakashi blinked at her a couple of times. “...Huh… how did no one think of that before…” he said, looking down with a hand on his chin, apparently going into deep thought.  
  
“Huh?” Sakura asked.

“Plants are living things… Medical ninjutsu is about affecting living things… really, how did no one even bother trying before now…” Kakashi said, almost more to himself than anything. “Anyway,” he said, looking at Sakura again. “I assume you did at least figure out how to create Doton and Suiton chakra in order to get to Mokuton?” Kakashi asked.

“I can’t really do anything else of much note with them, but I did,” Sakura told him.

“Well, to even have them at all so soon is actually impressive, in all honesty. And at least you didn’t break _every_ rule on how exactly it’s _supposed_ to be used…” Kakashi said dryly.

“To be fair… if you said there have only ever been two other people with it, why should we assume we actually know all the rules?” Sakura asked.

Kakashi once again just blinked twice at her. “I’m starting to see how exactly you were the one to figure this out,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Your first thought was to question something like that, when I took it for granted. And it might be precisely because you’re inexperienced that you’re in the habit of doing that. The way ninja learn things is usually very heavy on tradition and repetition. It’s drilled into you that mistakes can only mean failure," Kakashi started, with a long sigh. "Things get taken for granted because questioning them is seen as a waste of time. Experimentation isn’t usually rewarded or encouraged much unless you’re already regarded as good enough to get away with it. It’s generally seen as foolish to take risks like that when there’s a tried and true method you already know of,” Kakashi explained. 

“We’re always so hung up on results that we keep treading the same paths… And quite frankly, everyone’s always afraid of being wrong. Anyway. Since you do also have access to two basic elemental natures, those can be incorporated into your combat style too,” Kakashi told Sakura. “And you said you were trying to teach yourself healing? I could see about finding someone who knows more…”

“ Actually, about that last thing… I’m not… actually sure I want to be a healer?” Sakura told Kakashi. “...I mean, I thought about it, and… I just felt like I needed to learn healing because it seemed like Wave had proven to me that I was too cowardly to fight… But really, what good would healing actually do me right now? If Haku hadn’t conveniently decided to avoid killing Sasuke-kun, he’d… he’d, well, he’d already be dead way before I could’ve ever gotten to him… Not only that, but me focusing so much on healing would make me too much of a target. I feel like I would ironically just endanger the others more if they have to keep jumping to the healer’s defense. It’s just… yeah, healing is really useful and important, but it’s such a _reactive_ thing. You have to wait until _after_ the injuries happen, and by then it might be too late anyway,” Sakura said.

“That’s a good way to put it.” Kakashi said, with a thoughtful little hum. “I honestly didn’t feel like you were best suited as a healer either, but I wanted to leave the option open. It’s not that I don’t think you could learn it. You definitely could. In record time, probably. But it’s about your mindset. And to me, you strike me much more as a type who wants to get on the front lines and take immediate action, but doesn’t feel she actually can. You get stuck in your own head, and waste time. You overthink, and talk yourself out of things. So in the end, you just keep hanging back, making yourself small, and limiting yourself,” Kakashi said. 

“Besides that… Even though I said you’re an overthinker, you also have a penchant for being rash and short-tempered. The traits clash, and your rash actions end up even less effective because you’re forming haphazard plans that you aren’t even confident in. Not particularly great for healers. Now that I think about it, not actually great for genjutsu, either. You’re highly intelligent, but that takes a level head, and a lot of on-the-spot cunning, precision, and trickery. It's not that we can't still work to improve in that area, but your intelligence is currently more in line with overseeing things from a safe distance, where you feel less overwhelmed," Kakashi continued.

Sakura blushed, mixed feelings swirling in her chest. On one hand, the praise felt really nice, but on the other, he’d hit the nail on the head when it came to her behavioral shortcomings.  
  
“So, in the end… Your mentality is probably easier to mold towards physical combat, all things considered,” Kakashi told her. “You’d be better for it than you think, with the right help. You want to take action. You're stubborn, and you've got heart. And you have a lot of pent-up anger that can be put to good use. And like I said, your physical strength is surprising. What you need most is to be more confident, and more decisive. Even your temper would likely be helped, because I believe a lot of your temper stems from your insecurity,” Kakashi told her. “Insecurity makes you easy to threaten. Easy to rile up,” Kakashi told her. Sakura bowed her head in a moment of shame, thinking back to how Ino always got under her skin so easily, and how sometimes she got so frustrated with Naruto over practically nothing. Once again, Kakashi had a point, but…

“What are you, a therapist now?” she quipped, too tired and sore to bother with her nice girl routine.  
  
“ Damn, I wish,” Kakashi replied with a dry chuckle, rather than getting cross with the remark. “No, I’m just trained to pay close attention to body language and people’s mannerisms. Simply picking out people’s weak areas in a passably intelligent sounding way is hardly therapy,” Kakashi replied. “ A lot of the time, it just means you’re rude. But on the other hand… there is something _related_ to healing that I’ve still been wondering if you could do,” he said.

“What’s that?” Sakura asked, perking up a bit..

“Up until now, Mokuton users have had powerful self-regenerative abilities… Mokuton is the power of life and nature, after all. If you’ve already come this far, I’m pretty confident you can handle learning that. And if you did, that would be far less obvious to peg as a Mokuton ability, so it’d be something I’d be more comfortable with you using,” Kakashi said. Predictably, Sakura perked up even more, clearly looking enraptured by what he was saying.

What Kakashi didn’t tell her was that he wasn’t actually sure it was that simple. The regenerative abilities seemed to be an inherent part of Hashirama’s cells, but no one was sure of the exact relationship between the self-regeneration and Mokuton itself. Did they even actually have anything to do with one another, or was it coincidence?

But Kakashi wasn’t lying about what he’d said. Sakura had already done more than he ever could’ve possibly expected, and he believed that her ignorance and inexperience was actually an asset in that regard. If she’d actually been told she couldn’t achieve Mokuton, she simply wouldn’t have. She didn’t have the confidence to be so defiantly contrary, so trying to challenge her in that kind of way wouldn’t work. That meant that the alternative was just continuing to see where her blissfully ignorant brilliance would take her.

It was why Kakashi didn’t feel too bad about being the “softest” with her in general, out of the three kids. The others were insecure in their own ways, and it was good to be patient with them, but what they needed more was humility. It would backfire if he were to excessively stroke their egos or praise them too often.

...And perhaps, deep down, he found Sakura easiest to be around because Sakura brought up the least regrets and painful memories… She was somewhat equatable to Rin, but refreshingly different in various ways, and it was nothing as overpowering as the baggage surrounding Naruto and Sasuke.

…Perhaps, deep down, it explained why he was secretly glad she said she didn’t want to be a healer.  
  
...Why he was so intent on seeing if she could regenerate, too.

To be fair, it did make him pretty guilty to secretly find one of his students easier to be around and easier to talk to than the others. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to overcome that weakness of his… but, well, that didn’t erase the fact that it was true.

Still… maybe he could try to at least add a certain element of challenge to try and motivate her to learn faster. Just with a lower bar than leading her to fear it’d be outright impossible. He didn’t want to break her spirit, but making her feel like he trusted her to meet a big challenge could help bolster her confidence more too.

“You know, Sakura… The Chuunin Exams are coming up in about two months. Right now, I’m not sure if it’d be safe to let you go… but if you manage to learn how to regenerate by then, I think that would be enough of an accomplishment to give you a good chance. And, well, passing would put you one step closer to being cleared to use the rest of your Mokuton abilities, now wouldn’t it?” Kakashi said with a masked smirk.

In response, Sakura’s eyes were shining with both determination and, apparently, the beginning of tears. As much as she was uncertain about being able to pass… Kakashi’s belief in her was having the desired effect in giving her the burst of confidence she’d need to get motivated.

“I’ll do it!” Sakura said with a quick nod. She didn’t want to admit it, but… it was actually the very first time she could remember anyone believing in her so much. Even her parents. Sure, they knew she was smart, but they’d started taking her intelligence for granted early on. Academic achievement was just a baseline expectation they had. 

“Once again, don’t get too excited. I’ll give you an extra day off every week, so you’ll have more time and energy for looking into that, but otherwise our training continues as it does now. Understand?” Kakashi said.

“Yes, sensei!” Sakura replied. Honestly, she was glad. She liked studying and all, but she didn’t want to be left to her own devices again, and she didn’t necessarily think she’d _prefer_ to hole up in a library all day if there were more fulfilling options.

“Good. You’ll make me proud,” Kakashi said with a smile. Warmth immediately spread through Sakura’s entire core. For once, instead of resisting an urge to yell or complain or throw out a bratty quip, Sakura actually found herself fighting back the urge to _hug_ the man instead… If only because she still wasn’t quite sure how he’d react.

So, from there, time continued its steady march.

* * *

Sakura threw herself into her new objective. Half because of how happy she was to have clearance to work with Mokuton more, and half because of how badly she wanted to please Kakashi… especially when part of her was afraid that if she wasn’t good enough, he’d lose interest again.

In fact, she wanted to succeed badly enough that she ended up asking Naruto for a favor. She’d been telling herself that she needed to try being nicer to him, after all.

Specifically, how to use shadow clones.

She wasn’t expecting a miracle, her chakra wasn't really suited for it, but all she really needed was one clone. She figured it could be like a research assistant, fetching materials and helping her take notes. Once again, Kakashi’s increased confidence in her ever since she’d learned Mokuton helped her out, since she ran it by him first and he’d actually decided to trust her with the risks of the technique.

Sure enough, Naruto was more than happy to show her, and it fortunately didn’t take too long at all for her to at least be able to make the single clone she needed. 

It was easy in overall execution, but she could definitely feel the reason why it wasn’t a technique for everyone. Even one clone sapped an alarmingly big chunk of her energy in no time, but at least it didn’t demand more upkeep once it was deployed. That was good to know. Either way, it didn’t feel like she could hope to use the technique in a real fight any time soon, it’d definitely be too impractical.

A bit disappointing to realize, but at least she had the ability to use it for what she’d really been planning. Just the fact that she’d thanked Naruto afterwards had been good enough for him, leaving him with a dopey grin once they were finished.

As it turned out, the shadow clone was even _better_ for research than she’d realized!  
  
She’d been using it to take notes because she’d been expecting that she’d just benefit from being able to read those later… only to discover that right after the clone vanished for the first time, she didn’t even _have_ to. She already remembered writing them all.

* * *

The very next day, she couldn’t help but rave to Naruto about it. “Naruto! You didn’t tell me your shadow clones are _that_ amazing! I can’t believe I actually remembered everything my clone was studying!”

“Haha, yeah, I guess it really is a pretty awesome- wait, what?” Naruto said, his expression quickly going from dopey elation to confusion. “Clones can do that?”

“...You haven’t realized?” Sakura asked, frowning with confusion. “Don’t you get the memories of the stuff your clones did, Naruto?”

“Uh… Well, uh, you know...” Naruto said, trailing off as he clearly didn’t want to admit that Sakura apparently knew something about his favorite technique that he didn’t.

“You know what, nevermind. It’d be easier if we just do a quick test to see if you can. Okay so… How’s about… you make a clone, and then I’ll whisper something to it that only it will hear. When it disappears, you should know what I told it,” Sakura said. “Easy, right?”

“Alright, one sec!” Naruto replied, as he followed her directions. Once the clone was formed, Sakura quickly had it run away from the original Naruto with her for a bit before whispering something to it. Besides the fact that his clone had a rather dejected reaction to whatever she said, the original Naruto didn’t know a thing. 

Then, the clone promptly vanished, and Sakura jogged back over to Naruto. “Alright, so what did I just say to you?” she asked him.

“...That I’m a dummy for not figuring this out sooner…” Naruto said, adopting the exact same dejected expression as his clone.

“Right! So it _does_ work for you after all!” Sakura said. “But there has to be some actual good reason why you didn’t realize before… I don’t really think you’re _that_ stupid, Naruto…” she continued, which seemed to cheer Naruto up.

“You really think so?” Naruto asked, beaming at her.

“Well, it’s just a theory for now… but my first guess would be that it has something to do with the number of them you usually use. Just now, you only had to take in information from one clone. But a lot of the time, you’re using a lot of them. If you had to take in information from all of them at the same time, it’d be hard for anyone’s brain to keep up, no matter how smart they are… So maybe your mind usually just kinda… blocks it out, as some kind of way of protecting itself,” Sakura explained. “Maybe it’s a safety feature of the jutsu itself…”

“Oh, that makes sense! You’re so smart, Sakura-chan!” Naruto replied, clearly preening at the attention from her.

“Well, I could still be wrong… we’re gonna have to test it more for a while,” Sakura told him.

“Sure! Anytime you want! Literally, whenever, don’t be afraid to come get me! You can have my address if you want!” Naruto replied.

Just a couple of months ago, Sakura would’ve refused the information. But… once again, she reminded herself that she needed to try being nicer to Naruto. So, she accepted. Luckily, she happened to carry note paper and pencils for him to write it down, since she spent so much time researching lately. His handwriting frankly kind of sucked, but at least it was legible.  
  
With that taken care of, Sakura continued both her own work and the experiments with Naruto over the following days.

* * *

As it turned out, her theory on numbers being a deciding factor was right, but the other factor was Naruto’s mindset and level of energy. Four clones was about his average for being able to retain their information, but it could go up to five when he was alert and well-rested. On the other hand, it went down to three or even just two if he was sufficiently exhausted.

Sakura didn’t really need to worry about it herself, since she could still only use one.  
  
But just that single clone was still doing a world of good, even with its inability to be used for practical combat.

It also had the benefit of making research a more strenuous action in its own right, so it became even more beneficial to her training that way.

Learning regeneration was definitely enough of an ordeal to warrant the help of a clone, at least when she had the chakra to spare. Sometimes, it was more practical to save as much chakra for the experiments as possible. Since it was something Kakashi couldn’t directly help her with, she was back to pure trial, error, and experimentation all over again.

But she was making progress. Tiring progress, but progress nonetheless.

It really helped that she’d been originally trying to learn medical ninjutsu anyway, because it gave her a much stronger idea of where to start. It seemed like it was best to look at it as a further extension of the “symbiosis” principle she used with Mokuton. Usually, she melded the energy she stimulated a plant to produce with her own chakra, to then direct the plant to move and grow as she desired. But with regeneration, she had to add a couple more steps. First, she had to route that newly generated Mokuton chakra back into her own body. Then, she had to use medical theory to apply it to stimulating her _own_ cells, like stimulating the division and multiplication of plant cells… but _different._

The amount of chakra you needed to divide human cells was totally different from plant cells, and so was the general timing and flow of the whole process. Precision was also something to worry about more. Plants were easy to “boss around”, so to speak. Their metabolic rate was slow and easily manipulated. You didn’t have to feel bad if you made some small mistakes, either. Living flesh was a whole different matter, because Sakura very much _did_ care about any kind of mistake, for pretty obvious reasons. Plus, it was more… finicky, in a way. More active in a way that made it harder to get the right responses. But since it was her own body, she had a major advantage. Even with her chakra mixed with the energy of a plant, there were no compatibility issues at all. Just a matter of timing, intensity, and flow.

It was the advantage of lacking those compatibility issues that ultimately allowed Sakura to pull through and slap together her first working version of a Mokuton regeneration technique after about a month of continuous work.

There were definitely flaws. It was still kind of slow, and kind of taxing on her chakra supply. It felt kind of weird, tingly and almost painful. She also couldn’t use it with much interruption, or multitask with it very well. Even just having to talk too much was enough to throw it off. But she was definitely impressed with how subtle its usage was. No hand signs, no glowing. Just concentration. Furthermore, she only needed to concentrate for the chakra flow. She didn’t need to think about the details of the healing itself, it just happened.

Of course, once Sakura had her “first draft” of the technique, Kakashi was there to help in the only way he really could… which, to put it bluntly, was kicking the absolute tar out of her. Perhaps that was being a little dramatic, but part of the process to encourage her to improve the jutsu was definitely to spar with her more harshly than he did before.

Necessity truly was the mother of invention.

It was either adapt quickly, or deal with a lot of pain, soreness, scrapes, cuts, nosebleeds, and bruises. Kakashi did at least have the decency to be apologetic and offer help tending to the wounds if it seemed she was struggling… but for the most part, she was stubborn enough to refuse the help. She wanted him to see that she could do it herself.

So, the next painful month was a month of refinement. Sakura quickly noted some key flaws in her technique, and Kakashi used the Sharingan and what he understood of chakra theory to at least try his best to intuit things that might help from her chakra flow, even if he wasn’t too personally familiar with what she was doing.

First, and somewhat obviously, was that if she wanted her regeneration technique to be easier to multitask, then she had to actually adjust the chakra flow into something more multi-tasking friendly, instead of just stubbornly hoping she could keep it the same and simply get used to that through repetition.  
  
For that, she had to give up on her cautious, perfectionist approach of directing the chakra _exactly_ where needed and instead just let it diffuse into her system and keep naturally circulating through her entire body. She had to fully trust that the chakra wouldn’t harm her or dissipate if she just let it move more freely.

It had a downside of slowing the healing process down some, and needing significantly more chakra and prep time at first, so that her system would be “saturated” with enough of it that it would work properly without being tightly focused to specific areas. It also didn’t seem like it would be anywhere near enough to handle severe injury. But the upside was that it took _dramatically_ less focus, and it could work on _all_ of the damaged areas in her body at once. Before, she’d needed to prioritize one area at a time, but not anymore. In fact, once she got the circulation going properly, it kept working by itself until it ran out. Unfortunately, running out was still a very common issue. Another reason why she was pretty sure that major injuries wouldn’t be on the table.

On the upside, even with its limits, regeneration created something of an “upward spiral” when it came to physical progress. As she got better, using it not only healed her, but re-energized her to an extent. It was as if it "refunded" some of its chakra costs, which let her train more intensely than before. With more training, she could physically improve faster. With more improvement, she could sustain regeneration better. It was a cycle that could steadily repeat over and over again.

As hard as the training was, the fact that she could notice herself getting better faster than she did before was motivating enough that she kept at it. Overall, her improvement felt roughly three times faster than it did in the first few weeks she trained with Kakashi, although it was pretty hard to quantify such a thing exactly. She was mostly going by her slowly climbing stamina and chakra reserves.

She’d even managed to learn how to raise earthen walls, and how to make a whip out of water, or pummel the opponent with high-speed spheres of it. Kakashi had given her a seal-expanded portable water flask for those two jutsu.

Even during regular training with the rest of the team, she could notice how much she was improving as she sparred against Naruto and Sasuke. She was still behind, but the difference was that she could notice she definitely wasn’t as behind as before. Even so, Naruto had definitely been abusing everything he’d learned from the shadow clone experiments with her, because it looked like he was improving faster than before too.

* * *

There was something odd, though. She’d privately been letting Kakashi use the Sharingan to watch her use Mokuton more… and curiously, even though Kakashi seemed to see and understand what she was doing with her chakra when she used Mokuton, even her non-genetic method apparently wasn’t something you could just copy with the Sharingan. In particular, the step with feeding a mix of Doton and Suiton through plant material, and then harnessing the plant’s energy to create your Mokuton chakra was where she lost him.

Apparently, because the Sharingan couldn’t actually… properly see the plant energy she was referring to?

Kakashi was telling her that the chakra produced from such limited amounts of plant tissue alone wasn’t actually anywhere near sufficient for what she was doing, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense?

It definitely was for her, so what was his issue? Wasn’t he better than her anyway?  
  
Finally, after a lot of deliberation and a lot of failed attempts, which had them parting ways the latest they ever had before, Kakashi gave his answer, solemn and almost disbelieving.  
  
“Boy, you really are the world’s most ignorant genius, aren’t you?” Kakashi said quietly, with a low chuckle, after perhaps his fifteenth failed attempt.

“What?” Sakura asked.

“The energy you mean… it’s not even chakra, it must be _natural energy...”_ Kakashi said quietly. “That’s why I can’t see it. That’s why you couldn’t manipulate it directly, either, and why you have to mix it with Doton and Suiton to properly use it,”

“Wait, what does that mean? What’s the difference?” Sakura asked, frowning slightly. She really didn’t like the feeling of not knowing things.

“Sakura… I’m not sure if you’ll actually know what this means right now, but... I’m guessing that this is because of your talent for chakra control, along with your approach to attuning yourself with plants. It must’ve involved a lot of sitting very still and monitoring their energy very, very closely. Why? Because technically speaking, Sakura, your Mokuton methodology is a _minor form of senjutsu,”_ Kakashi told her, speaking as if she’d unearthed a fist-sized diamond or something.

Sakura just blinked a couple of times at that.

It was true that she didn’t know what he was talking about, which was frustrating, but…

It did definitely sound like her life had just become more complicated _yet again._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So first off, I know the senjutsu thing is weird, but I really wanted to stop there for dramatic effect, so let me briefly semi-explain before chapter 3, where I’ll really get into it.
> 
> One, I don’t see why using senjutsu has to be an all-or-nothing kind of thing, and I don’t see why there would only be one kind of natural energy.
> 
> So, this doesn’t mean Sakura’s anywhere close to Sage Mode, or attuned to all natural energy. She’s also not in danger of petrifying, because it’s not Sage Mode.
> 
> Narratively, this is for worldbuilding, and to make this method still impossible to immediately copy with a Sharingan. If you could, that’d feel way too cheap. Kakashi can only learn it if he sits down and puts in proper, sustained effort just like Sakura did.
> 
> As much as I tried my best to rationally explain my take on not making Sakura a healer… The biggest reason is that I just don’t wanna, tbh. There are also some meta/storytelling reasons for it.
> 
> For one, I never liked that she just became a Tsunade clone. Basic ability to heal others would be cool, but I’d prefer she focus on combat and that she gets to be genuinely tough and tanky. Once her confidence issues aren’t holding her back, she’s the type who wants to get up close and get her hands dirty.
> 
> Another thing is that when you’re a teenager and you’ve only been training seriously since you were 12, there’d naturally be downsides to splitting your efforts so much. So, I feel like I’d be too limited in how skilled healer!Sakura could believably be in combat. Canonically, I don’t like how the attempt to make her a fighter and a healer just means that in combat, she’s a glass cannon with poor relative speed and range when compared with others. In RPG terms, imagine a paladin with bad defense and bad HP, or a white mage that has to get up close. What’s the point of that? Even the Yin Seal’s flawed because it has to be used sparingly, while still doing nothing about her speed or range.
> 
> Also, in purely canonical terms, I don’t actually think you could learn Hashirama’s regeneration just by having Wood Release. I just think it’d be neat if the two powers were directly connected, and I feel it’s narratively tidier and less convoluted.
> 
> Plus, I feel like Sakura learning it is kind of narratively necessary for Kakashi to have something that can strongly assure him she’ll hold her own in the Chuunin Exams, now that he’s more worried and emotionally invested in her than he was in canon. 
> 
> I also introduced clone training earlier, but drastically toned down number limits, because otherwise all the pacing and power scaling would be an absolute mess. So far, Sakura can only sustainably use hers for research assistance


	3. Chapter 2: Sprout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More discussions of an expanded take on chakra theory, as well as Team 7 meeting a certain foreign trio of ninja..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a warning, I'm gonna fudge the amounts of time that pass between events quite a bit sometimes, to better suit my purposes.

“Kakashi-sensei, what do you mean that my Mokuton is a minor form of senjutsu?” Sakura asked, as they stood close to the trees in their typical remote training ground for Sakura's extra practice.  
  
“It’s a term that refers to any jutsu where you mix natural energy with physical and spiritual energy,” he explained. “Basically, natural energy comes in a few different types. All natural energy shares a few aspects, like how you normally can’t sense or harness it. The four most basic sub-categories are atmospheric, lithospheric, hydrospheric, and biotic. Biotic further splits into the energy categories of plants and animals… and then I suppose fungi and bacteria and whatnot, but those aren’t as well understood. As it is, there’s still a lot we don’t know about natural energy in general,” Kakashi ended that particular segment with a shrug before he continued.

“It’s not too easy to study it when it’s so unusual for anyone to actually have the ability to detect it. You’ve only gained the ability to detect one specific subset of natural energy, not all of it,” Kakashi continued. “Regardless, it’s still a major accomplishment. You’ve done better than I could’ve imagined,” he finished, giving a genuine smile as he came forward and ruffled Sakura’s hair. It was kind of hard to get the nuances of his expressions down with his mask always on, but Sakura was getting better and better at that. It sent a rush of satisfied elation down to her very core.  
  
Still, Sakura’s curiosity quickly distracted her from how the praise and physical contact briefly put her on cloud nine. “Wait… don’t humans have natural energy of their own, since we’re living things and part of the world too? Why can’t we at least use our own? You’d think we’d be able to, right? But we must not, or else every jutsu we’d do would technically be senjutsu, wouldn’t it?” Sakura asked.  
  
“Good questions. The answer is that we do have it, but like you suspect, we don’t use it. Like a lot of things, it’s just particularly difficult and dangerous to do. Apparently, your personal natural energy has various subtle functions, including being your body’s last lifeline whenever you’re dangerously low on chakra. It helps to balance out the deficiency in your spiritual and physical energy. As bad as the symptoms of chakra exhaustion may be, you’d experience them more quickly and intensely if you were excessively low on natural energy too. Often, fatally so,” Kakashi said grimly. “So in short, it’d be a whole lot easier to accidentally get yourself killed.”  
  
“Oh, that makes sense! So it’s kind of like having an emergency backup generator to keep the most important stuff going when there’s a power outage?” Sakura asked.  
  
“I’d say that’s a decent comparison, yes,” Kakashi replied.  
  
He frowned when he saw how Sakura pouted at that.  
  
“Don’t tell me. You already figured you might be able to use your natural energy supply for more chakra, didn’t you?” Kakashi flatly asked, his single visible eye half-lidded and disapproving.  
  
“Yes…” Sakura guiltily replied, seeing no point in lying as she turned away and looked at the ground.

“Well, I more or less just explained why that’s an awful idea,” Kakashi said, before he gave her a somewhat mischievous look. “But hey, if you want to die, you’d save me an awful lot on restaurant bills, right?” Kakashi dryly quipped.  
  
“Y-you- I don’t really eat that much! And it’s not like anyone’s telling you to take me out to eat anyway!” Sakura cried, stomping her foot. The truth was, between all the metabolic demands of her training, and the fact that her regeneration technique tended to stimulate her appetite, it was a bit of an embarrassing subject.

“Does my conscience count? Damn thing’s just about ready to kick the bucket, but it won’t leave me alone if I don’t do it,” Kakashi dryly replied, with a nonchalant shrug.

Sakura felt heat rise to her cheeks for a moment, feeling a bit tripped up by the admission that he was spending money on her purely because he wanted to… even if it was half-joking.

“W-well, y’know, well... Anyway!” Sakura replied, quickly pushing the mushy feelings that made her want to hug him aside. “The natural energy thing doesn’t have to be all or nothing, right? What if you only let yourself use half of it? Or, what if you had some way of saving up extra?” Sakura asked. She knew it was probably her easiest and safest option to just drop the idea completely, but she just couldn’t help the incredible curiosity.  
  
Honestly, Kakashi was getting kind of curious too, but it felt dangerous to be getting that way, so he held firm. Mostly. His temptation did lead to him dropping a little more information than he felt necessary. “What you’re talking about, as far as using your own natural energy… People do know of it. It’s called ‘Minor’ Sage Mode. As opposed to Major, or True Sage Mode, named as such because it also takes in any and all natural energy around you. That makes it far stronger, but a lot more unstable and dangerous to unlock,” he explained.  
  
He gave a little sigh and looked at the ground for a moment before continuing, as if a bit frustrated. “Still, I don’t know enough about this kind of thing to speculate too heavily on your suggestions, and I can’t have you thinking it’s okay based on something I said carelessly,” he replied honestly, as much as he hated to say it. Sakura wasn’t the only one who didn’t like not knowing things, but senjutsu practitioners were incredibly rare. It was still staggering that all signs pointed to the fact that Sakura technically kind of was one, even if in a very limited and specific way.  
  
Out of everyone, Kakashi figured that if Jiraiya were around, he’d be the safest bet for teaching Sakura something like that… if it weren’t for the fact that Jiraiya was Jiraiya, and Sakura was a 12 year old girl.  
  
Kakashi respected him enough to trust he wouldn’t do anything _outright,_ and on a rational level he didn’t _seriously_ think the man was a pedophile. But _still._ Even beyond that, Jiraiya was a difficult person, in Kakashi’s opinion.

Sakura was actually fidgeting a bit from the sheer need to know more as she spoke again. “Okay, so, wait… With Doton and Suiton, a lot of the time, you use naturally pre-existing water and earth to use them. So why isn’t that senjutsu?” Sakura asked. “Aren’t they where the hydrospheric and lithospheric energy would logically come from? And air for Fuuton techniques, doesn't that have the atmospheric energy?”  
  
Kakashi sighed. He knew full well that the moment he gave her more information to latch onto, she’d keep pressing. “They are the sources of it. But people are normally totally unaware of that when they’re using chakra to shape and control them, so none of the natural energy is actually powering the technique. And simply making them aware doesn’t solve the problem. They still have to be good enough to mix their elemental chakra with the natural energy so easily and fluidly that the techniques remain just as fast and efficient to use, and you know that using elemental chakra is already its own challenge to start with,” Kakashi said.  
  
“But assuming that you use equal ratios of physical, spiritual, and natural energy… Figuring it out basically means those techniques would have one and a half times more chakra behind them, right off the bat!” Sakura replied excitedly. “Since, if you were to somehow quantify chakra into points, and then hypothetically add 100 points of physical and 100 points of spiritual into water or earth… that means there’s an even balance once you mix in 100 points of natural from it. I’m also willing to bet that having control over the natural energy of the substance probably lets you control it more easily in general. Not only that, but if you were to find a way to control the natural energy with lower ratios of your own chakra, you’d get an even bigger boost to the amount of chakra in action, although I’m kind of thinking that would mean it’d be less stable...” Sakura said, as she began to pace back and forth. 

“Like, if you balance 1/4th physical energy and 1/4th spiritual against ½ natural, that might work, and then the chakra in use would be multiplied by 2 instead,. But it seems like that’d probably be harder, too… Huh,” Sakura was holding her hand against her chin as she briefly stopped and looked to the ground in thought, but then she kept walking and talking at a steady clip.

“Then there might be a method where you could diffuse your chakra through the natural energy of the element as thinly as possible, and create some kind of ‘lattice’ or ‘mesh’ that lets you control a proportionately huge amount. But, honestly, that sounds really imprecise _and_ really exhausting, and it’d probably require loads of concentration,” Sakura finally seemed to be done at that point, or at least done enough that Kakashi could get a word in edgewise.  
  
“Well, considering that you already safely figured out the natural energy of plants, I’m actually not as opposed to this idea, since you wouldn’t be risking the natural energy within yourself. Logically, I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t eventually be able to do this. Unfortunately, we can’t do much about it right now, since we only have a week left until exams start up, and you can’t overwork yourself with the deadline so soon. Fortunately… I’ve got another idea,” Kakashi said, half to distract _himself,_ as a little part of his mind was so fascinated by Sakura’s potential that he was honestly starting to want to see if she could get away with her idea after all. “Something to help cover for your regeneration flaws. We should try supplementing it with chakra-based reinforcement. You don’t need to heal as much if you’re not as fragile to start with, right?” Kakashi asked.  
  
Sakura gaped at him for a moment “Sensei! I feel like that’s the first thing I should’ve thought of! Why didn’t we do that first? It seems like it’d be easier than regenerating, actually! I wouldn’t have to know anything about healing to create armor,” Sakura said.  
  
Kakashi just shrugged as he began his casual response. “I didn’t want to say anything too soon because you’ve already been moving at such a rapid pace as it is. Even though your three basic elemental jutsu are simple, it's still worth noting that you've learned several new jutsu already, when I've only been training you more seriously for less than three months. That's on top of all the physical training and sparring you do. It’s all a big load when you don’t have a Sharingan or huge chakra reserves making things easier on you,” Kakashi said. “Not to mention, you could use Mokuton for this too,” Kakashi continued, looking at her appraisingly. 

“After all, now we know that you can apply the chakra with exceptionally low visibility to maintain secrecy, which was something we didn’t know before. I feel like you’ve gotten good enough with regeneration that we can try to squeeze this in. Otherwise, we’d be risking the outcome of you stretching yourself too thin, then ending up with both techniques being too shoddy to use,” Kakashi said, leaning casually against a tree.  
  
“I think I get it… If I can make chakra armor that’s as subtle as the regeneration is, then it won’t show up with any visible wood-like properties. It might even be outright invisible without special dojutsu,” Sakura said, a smile slowly spreading across her features the way it typically did whenever she was entertaining an interesting idea.  
  
“Exactly,” Kakashi said, not even bothering to hide how obvious his proud smile was even with the mask on. Gods, if only Naruto caught on so easily. At least Sasuke could, but that was only whenever he deigned to actually listen to Kakashi instead of trying to handle everything himself. Kakashi remembered how he’d never said he wouldn’t give more advice to the boys back when they were tree-climbing, but they’d automatically considered asking him for more help as off-limits just to protect their egos. More evidence that their rivalry was potentially unhealthy. But all three of the kids were stubborn as hell, and he didn’t know how to get them to stop something with years of inertia behind it. Sakura was just the most cooperative kind of stubborn.

“But… when I first showed you Mokuton, you were able to use your Sharingan to confirm it. And Sasuke-kun wouldn’t know better, but there are still Hyuuga…” Sakura said, frowning slightly.

“Well, I have worked closely with the only other living user of it, so that’s why I could recognize it easily. Kekkei Genkai made of combined nature releases don’t necessarily become a completely _new_ chakra, they just show up as an even blend. There is the possibility that a Byakugan user could see the preliminary step of you routing chakra through your wooden ring or staff first, which makes for a stronger indicator, but I feel a white lie could suffice in that case,” Kakashi said.  
  
“What kind of lie?” Sakura replied, suddenly quite stiff. She really wasn’t a very good liar.  
  
“The best ones are usually half true. So, we simply tell them that you’ve discovered a method where plant material helps you focus those elements, if they ask,” Kakashi replied. "It's a huge leap of logic to assume that you know Mokuton even if they see that, so they should buy it."  
  
Sakura felt immediate relief at the idea. Kakashi was right, making it half-true would make it a lot easier for her to convincingly say.

“Okay, that works. But as for the armor jutsu... It’ll probably be a pretty involved process if I want it to be stable and long-term. So I might have to come up with a compatible sequence of hand signs too,” Sakura said, half to herself and half to Kakashi.

Once again, Kakashi was impressed to see that Sakura was taking to the task ahead of her even in the face of possibly needing to come up with her own hand seal sequence. Her motivation had definitely come a long way. They only had a week left, but that didn’t stop her from embarking on the quest to learn how to make a protective, and yet hidden Mokuton shroud at all.  
  
Kakashi was a bit nervous, but he didn’t doubt her odds. Her chakra control was naturally exceptional, which would help make it easier for her to arrange a valid sequence of hand seals. In theory, the perfect ninja would never need to use hand seals at all. They were basically important for the sake of speed, accessibility, and quality assurance. To assure not only that something was easier to teach and learn, but that it was always efficient and consistent. Kind of like using stencils, versus drawing shapes out freehand. Each one tended to be vaguely symbolic for whatever effect on the chakra it accomplished when used, and those effects followed a set of rules.   
  
Tiger, Ram, and Ox served to intensify power, for instance, but in their own ways. Tiger was most intense, for quick, sudden bursts of sheer ferocity. Ram for a powerful, straightforward flow with an abrupt finish, and Ox for a strong, heavy, enduring flow.

Hare and Horse were both for speed of flow, with Hare being for a faster, lighter, more immediate burst and Horse being for heavier, more sustained operations. 

Snake and Monkey were generally for flexibility, but Snake was better for Yin and Monkey was better for Yang. Snake was also better for subtlety, or techniques where chakra needed to repeatedly loop and coil, while Monkey benefitted techniques where the flexibility needed to be very active and dynamic.  
  
Rat was typically for making chakra more “fine”. Such a property helped with shaping thinner or more intricate chakra, and for techniques where chakra needed to subtly infiltrate your target. It came up quite a bit in genjutsu, as well as Nara clan techniques, and also often helped to make something with a lot of speed and/or power to it more manageable.  
  
Dog was generally for stability, and increasing how controlled a jutsu was, reflecting a dog’s “loyalty” and “tameness”. But depending on how it was used, it could also have a wilder and more powerful aspect to it.  
  
Some were mixed, but in ways that they were not always necessarily interchangeable with others. For example, Boar could be both power and stability, but the dual nature meant that it was less potent in each individual aspect. Sometimes that was good, for when you needed the subtlety of the weaker effects, and other times it meant you were better off using a mix of other seals. 

Bird was for speed and flexibility, as well as making chakra “lighter” and more “diffuse”. If the last part wasn’t particularly desired, you could be better off with something like Hare and Snake.

Dragon was for a bit of everything, really, but with emphasis on intensity and refinement. That didn’t really make it an “ultimate” seal though. Having such a broad range of qualities meant that it often needed to be modified and tempered by other seals, so it didn’t solve everything.  
  
To complicate things further, they all had interactions with one another that subtly changed how they acted, based on order, adjacency, and the stereotypical relations of the animals. “Predator” seals before “prey” seals generally meant that the effects of the predator seal would intensify and the prey’s effect would weaken and become more subtle. Metaphorically, the prey was cornered, at the predator’s mercy. But when reversed, the effects reversed too. Putting the prey first meant that it had metaphorically escaped, while the predator was weakened from pursuing it.

It also wasn’t universal, due to the animal logic at play. For instance, Ox did not “fear” Dog. Meanwhile, Dog could be prey to Tiger and yet predator to Rat and Bird. Such arrangements also changed the ratio of Dog’s power aspect versus its stability aspect.  
  
Dragon was also an odd case, because it mimicked a predator-prey relation with every seal except Tiger. Putting Dragon and Tiger seals directly adjacent to one another in either order meant mutual intensification, as they would “fight”, but neither side was necessarily superior. However, a dragon was considered a force of benevolence, so every other seal metaphorically revered Dragon rather than fearing it. So, putting it before them meant they would be “humbled”, and putting it after meant that they would be “emboldened” by having Dragon “at their back”. It was an important distinction, because even the humbling aspect was more supportive to prey seals than their “fear” of predator seals. They became less intense, but more stable and enduring.   
  
That wasn’t even getting into all the complex interactions of _more_ than two seals. For just one example, Ox wouldn’t “fear” just one Dog seal, but they could fear multiple Dog seals, representing a “pack”. Bird and Rat could also be repeated to make them more stable and less submissive towards predator seals. Prey between two predator seals often symbolized the predators fighting over that prey, rendering them both more active and aggressive while the prey seal would be especially subtle and submissive. There were yet more examples from there.  
  
Most infuriatingly, those complex interaction groups of three or more seals meant that there were such a staggeringly vast array of potential combinations that there was often more than one valid way to weave the same jutsu. From there, each method could have varying levels of success for different people, or just in general. But there would still tend to be one method that was deemed “most valid”, at least for most users, so clans and villages took great pains to try and assure that it would become the truly official one. 

There would also be a lot of times where ninja could actively count on an enemy’s knowledge of hand seal theory to confuse or mislead them. They could arrange sequences that were hard to outwardly make sense of, if they were skilled enough to omit certain seals but not all of them. Taken to its logical conclusion, it meant that there were many times when the official methodology was _intentionally_ not the easiest and most predictable methodology. There were also many times where the official methodology would end up being altered and updated over time, creating confusing situations like a grandfather and grandson doing the same technique differently.  
  
In short, mastery over inventing and deciphering seal sequences was **_hard_ ** _,_ and it was _definitely_ not for everyone.   
  
And Sakura would only have a week to come up with something that worked.  
  
For the time being, they’d just have to take it all one day at a time.

* * *

The next day, Sakura wasn’t feeling quite as excited and spirited from the high of new discovery as she had the night before. After Team 7 had completed yet another menial D-Rank, Naruto loudly and annoyingly blathered on as he often did about getting “cooler missions”. Then, Sakura had to sit through more of the increasingly petty and frustrating rivalry between him and Sasuke. It was annoying, as it always was, because it was so blindingly obvious that there wouldn’t be such an issue if Naruto weren’t so deeply insecure. He was constantly, _constantly_ hung up on his self-centered convictions that Sasuke just “wanted to make him look bad” and “hog the spotlight”, but what was most annoying was her attempt to get Sasuke to train one-on-one with her.

“You’re the same as Naruto, always bothering me for no reason,” Sasuke replied, giving her a bored, irritated glare that made her want to sink into a shameful puddle of sludge and just ooze into a sewer somewhere. “If you have time for this, you may as well spend it training with your _precious_ Kakashi-sensei…” Sasuke continued. Oddly enough, he seemed somehow _bitter,_ but Sakura was too dejected to really think about it much.   
  
“Y-you could come too when we’re doing that!” Sakura quickly replied, trying to compromise.   
  
“I wouldn’t want to split his attention. You need all the _catching up_ you can get,” Sasuke coldly replied, sending a wave of something icy and slimy creeping through Sakura’s entire being.  
  
If it were put more kindly, she could interpret it as concern… but the way it stood, she couldn’t delude herself into seeing it as anything other than dismissive condescension. 

It was even worse because there was also the fact that she’d changed her look up lately, and she was still adjusting, secretly unsure if she even looked good. But it’d been almost five months since Wave, and her old clothes were getting really worn out, even a little snug in some cases. She’d switched to tougher and more practical outfits, typically colored in predominantly light green, followed by tan and white as her general secondary colors. She’d also put her hair back in a long braid, not wanting to cut it but also wanting it more out of the way. 

Guiltily, Sakura found herself experiencing a surge of _anger_ towards Sasuke. Why would he just _shit_ all over her hard work like that? She was the one who was actually fucking _better_ than him when it came to her chakra control _and_ her variety of nature releases!   
  
But since the target of the anger was Sasuke, Sakura aggressively pushed it down and redirected a good chunk of it to Naruto. Sasuke had said they were the “same”, and they most certainly were not! It was all stupid Naruto’s fault, pitting himself against Sasuke and putting Sasuke in a bad mood!  
  
So, Sakura quietly stewed in that as Sasuke left. Kakashi had already left to file a mission report. A quiet little part of her wanted to go find him. Find him and cry to him, hug him close and hope he would tell her everything would be alright… But she felt stupid and guilty for that too. She wasn’t just some little girl who could go crying to Sensei. She was a ninja. Her status as a Genin literally made it so that she was technically considered an adult. Kakashi wouldn’t like some soft little weak girl either. Kakashi wanted her to be strong, so that was how she had to be.  
  
Or else.  
  
Thoughts of a perennially distant father with the same stubbornness as her, and an overbearing, judgmental mother with the same short temper as her came to her mind unbidden. The thoughts clashed in her mind and created even more guilt as she _dared_ contrast them with Kakashi’s encouraging words, their trips to go get food, his dry humor and clever insight, all the little signs of how much he was trying to look out for her and yet challenge her and take her seriously at the same time...  
  
 _Or else._

* * *

Not much time passed before Naruto got accosted by a group of three little kids. Sakura was vaguely familiar with them, but she’d only seldom seen them before. She at least knew who their “leader” was.  
  
Not that she particularly cared, once the little brat said she was Naruto’s girlfriend, and Naruto actually _agreed_ with him.  
  
Sakura already felt bad even _as_ she was punching Naruto in the next moment, knowing full well that hitting him so hard he went flying backwards and broke part of a nearby fence was uncalled for.  
  
Kakashi had outright told her that her insecurity fueled her other behavioral issues, and she was seeing what he meant more than ever.   
  
Especially because she knew full well that she still had the chance to stop right there and be the bigger person. Yet, her response was to just _double down_ on her aggression and punch a _little Academy kid,_ the _Hokage’s grandson,_ all because he insulted her for punching Naruto!  
  
She began to stalk away, still fuming and starting to bite back tears as her anger imploded inwards, crushing her with guilt and disgust at herself.  
  
Unfortunately, she wasn’t done there.  
  
“Damn it… that ugly huge forehead… Was she really even a _girl?”_ Sakura managed to overhear from the kid, once her back was turned.  
  
It felt like a sludge of pure, cold shame filled her entire system before igniting into _absolute fury._

 _“Was she really even a girl?”_ echoed in her head as she spun on her heels and chased the boy and his friends down without mercy. Was she? Was she really? Her, the violent, angry brute who attacked teammates and defenseless Academy students? Her, the one who’d gained almost _8 whole kilos_ of muscle and fat since Wave, especially since she’d stopped dieting and started training so much harder almost three months ago? Her, the one who'd never been as pretty as Ino? Her, the one who was _explicitly told_ that she didn’t have a good mindset for healing and genjutsu?

Sakura chased them even with all the guilt. Because her stupid, insecure pride kept egging her on. Because backing down felt too much like losing.

Soon enough, they all came to a stop. Sakura’s blood ran cold, because it wasn’t that she’d stopped chasing them. It was because the boy, Konohamaru, had run into an intimidating older boy who’d glowered down at him for just a precious few moments before yanking him up into the air by his shirt.  
  
Sakura was frozen.  
  
It was _all her fault._ _  
__  
_If she could just solve problems like a _normal person_ and not act like some violent, immature, selfish _bully_ , there wouldn’t be a little kid, the _Hokage’s grandson,_ getting threatened by some intimidating stranger! 

“Sorry… Please don’t hurt him, I was fooling around…” she weakly tried, subconsciously standing less straight, backing away a bit, and hiding her face a little. But even then, she was berating herself for how it was only when consequences were incoming that she suddenly wanted to put on a gentle, submissive, apologetic act. That wasn’t noble, that was just _cowardly._ She was _still_ too disgustingly self-conscious to even fully admit her wrongdoings, instead of trying to hide behind softer phrasing like “fooling around”. What she was doing wasn’t just fooling around, she was going to straight up _assault_ a bunch of _harmless little kids_ just because they made her mad! 

Of course, her sudden shameful spinelessness wasn’t doing anyone any good, it only meant she was incredibly easy for the strange older boy in baggy black clothes to ignore.  
  
There was a girl with him who was about his age, and she did tell him to stop because they’d apparently get scolded or something, but that barely dissuaded him. Worse, it didn’t look like she’d actually intervene much further.

That was when Naruto came shouting and charging in like a bull, hurling insults all the while. Sakura couldn’t say she hadn’t seen it coming.  
  
For his troubles, Naruto got knocked to the ground by the mere action of the older boy briefly moving his fingers in some weird way.

On one hand, Sakura thought Naruto was foolish for trying to get physical… but then she realized how hypocritical that was. She thought it was okay for her to be violent before, just because she was offended, but Naruto getting loud and violent because he was at least _trying_ to do the right thing was somehow unforgivably stupid?  
  
She really was like him…   
  
No, Sakura decided, she was _worse_ than him. At least he tried putting his aggression to good use sometimes. All she did was blow up at people who didn’t actually pose a threat, like an overcompensating _coward._

She had to do _something_. If she did nothing, the guilt would just swallow her whole. 

It was a plan that came almost automatically, and she didn’t bother to second-guess it. She couldn’t afford to. She could feel her thoughts jumping around, too agitated for her to fancy herself some kind of brilliant planner. Kakashi had already told her that getting stuck in her own head was one of her big issues. It was either act, or get paralyzed by indecision. She wasn’t good enough or composed enough for the third option.

Anger and shame building up within her, her chakra was already agitated enough to perform the effects of a Tiger seal without actually needing the seal itself. The jutsu she was using was fast and simple, but wasn’t typically practical for combat. Her advantage was that her target _didn’t know_ they were fighting yet.   
  
The Body Flicker technique activated explosively, Sakura’s body blurring forth with _unreal_ speed. She’d also been flooding the appropriate chakra into her wooden ring to rapidly call up a sloppy protective layer of pure Mokuton chakra; the most rudimentary version of what she’d discussed with Kakashi. It rapidly surged over her skin as a bright, vivid, very choppy and turbulent aura of green. The brightness was mainly a reflection of how rushed and inefficient it was rather than power, because a lot of energy was being wasted as it turned to light. At the very least, there was no obvious wood generation going on.

In the space of the next split second, an unbelievably fast fist coated in Mokuton was slamming straight into the older boy’s jaw with a sickening _crack,_ looking like nothing more than a streak of green light as it landed.

Konohamaru dropped from his grasp like a sack of potatoes, and everyone else gaped like a bunch of fish, as the boy in black went sailing _several meters_ through the air _,_ like a _ragdoll._ _  
__  
_Once he thudded to the ground, the sound louder than expected thanks to whatever large, misshapen thing he had tied up against his back, he was already soundly unconscious.

“Kankuro!” the older girl cried, jaw slack. Sakura just stood in place, panting. From just that one movement, her legs felt like jello, her ears were ringing, and she already felt a bit nauseous.  
  
All of those drawbacks made for good reasons why people didn’t just spam Body Flicker willy-nilly. It was easy to use, but it was such an excessively basic speed technique that it barely had any safety features built into its design. To actually be _good_ at it required a ton of skill and resilience.

“You bitch!” the older girl snarled as her head whipped around to glare at Sakura. “I’ll get you for-”  
  
Sakura panicked.  
  
Well, if it worked once…  
  
Sakura vanished with a loud crack of wind. The second time was even cruder than the first. The speed and g-force was so great that it was hard to actually raise her arm to strike, so she simply _slammed_ her forehead against the older girl’s. For once, maybe a big forehead was good for something after all.  
  
The older girl went flying too, although to be fair, it seemed she was actually the physically tougher of the pair. She hit the ground groaning in pain, but didn’t actually pass out like the boy she’d called Kankuro. At the very least, she didn’t look like she was in fighting shape. Konohamaru seemed fine too, quickly scrambling away to Naruto’s side.  
  
Good, because besides just the terrible ache in Sakura’s head, it was also taking Sakura everything she had to stand tall and pretend like she didn’t feel like absolute shit from performing two Body Flickers in a row. It probably also had to do with the fact that doing them without hand signs made them somewhat sloppier and less stable.

Sasuke appeared in a nearby tree a moment later, unable to hide his shock as he asked “What happened here?”  
  
Naruto quickly filled him in before Sakura could even think to try and spin the tale as charitably as possible. “Sakura-chan just laid those two flat, one hit each, ‘cause that ugly guy in black was messing with Konohamaru! It was _amazing!_ Well, she was chasing us before, so that part was kinda scary… but the part where she stood up for Konohamaru was _so awesome!”_ Naruto gushed. “Not even I could! The guy did some weird thing that made me trip, but Sakura-chan moved so fast that he couldn’t do it in time for her!”  
  
Sakura briefly hoped that somehow, Sasuke would be impressed with what he heard…  
  
Only for him to turn away with a brief grimace, as if he were hearing something he really didn’t want to be, and then fix her with a hard glare. “Don’t use so much force. These people seem foreign, you’ll make a scene,” Sasuke scolded.  
  
She bowed her head, feeling more ashamed than ever. He was right. Who knew what kind of future consequences she’d brought down on their heads, all because she’d used even _more_ excessive force to solve a problem she’d _started_ through excessive force?

“Hmph. What’s done is done,” said another voice, one Sakura didn’t recognize. She quickly looked towards the direction she heard it from, and saw the utterly disarming sight of a boy with dark markings around his eyes and a huge gourd on his back standing upside-down on a tree branch, arms crossed and expression stony. She was _absolutely certain_ that he hadn’t been there a second ago.

“Temari,” he said coldly, turning towards the older girl who was just starting to pick herself up off the ground. “You and Kankuro were careless. You paid the price,” he continued.  
  
Sakura noticed the way his very gaze seemed to make Temari briefly freeze up before she hauled herself to her feet as fast as she could.   
  
“And you,” the gourd boy said, turning towards Sakura. Just then, his eyes briefly widened in surprise, and then narrowed, as he… he _sniffed the air_ in her general direction? And then… for whatever reason, he clutched his head with a briefly pained expression, before it seemed like he was briefly _muttering to someone_. He was clearly quite distracted by the whole thing, before he came back to his senses and gained some level of urgency that he hadn’t displayed before. He was frowning harder, eyes sharper, focused intently as he seemed to scrutinize her every pore. Sand idly swirled around him.  
  
In a single Body Flicker, he was in front of Sakura in an instant. “Your name,” he said. It wasn’t a question.  
  
“H-Haruno Sakura,” she replied, trying her very best to put on a brave face. “Yours?”  
  
“Gaara of the Desert,” he stated, immediately and matter-of-factly. “I’ll be watching you,” he said with an eerie calm. Sakura didn’t even have time to question him further, because he gave Temari some kind of _look_ that seemed to tell her everything he needed it to.   
  
With all the haste of a panicked rabbit, Temari hurriedly picked up Kankuro like a sack of potatoes, and then they all simply _vanished_ in a swirl of sand.  
  
Sakura tried looking to Sasuke for some kind of reassurance, seeing as he was usually the collected one, but… he was just gritting his teeth in apparent frustration, before he leapt from his perch in the tree and landed near her.   
  
“That sneaky one with the gourd thinks he’s so great… Tch,” Sasuke grumbled. “Big words, for a guy who was afraid to even look at me.”  
  
Sakura fought the urge to roll her eyes, and only succeeded because it was Sasuke. She wanted to be on his side, but _seriously?_ Was that _actually_ how he was trying to rationalize the fact that Gaara didn’t pay him any mind?

Gods, Sakura just wanted to crawl into a ditch somewhere.

She turned to look at Konohamaru, wanting to see if he was okay, but all he did was avoid her gaze and subtly try to hide behind Naruto.  
  
Some savior she was...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m actually farther along than this, and this was gonna be longer at first. But I had to split it to keep it from getting totally out of hand, because it originally went up to meeting Rock Lee. (and boy do I have Some Plans for my boy Lee)
> 
> I think it’s starting to become apparent what I meant by this story being kind of pessimistic about certain things, and about Sasuke being an asshole. I actually like Sasuke, I’m just of the opinion that he wouldn’t be more receptive to Sakura just for being stronger and harder-working than canon.
> 
> The other reason for it in this particular context is that I didn’t want Sakura feeling rewarded for what happened here.
> 
> And to be fair, a lot of the “comedy” scenes really do become pretty messed up when you reframe them as serious.
> 
> Canonically speaking, I think it’s impossible that the gap between Chuunin Exams and Wave was five months, but any less just didn’t feel like “enough”, so, y’know. Is how it is.
> 
> Also, I definitely want to keep going with the idea of Sakura being less skinny than canon, for a few reasons.
> 
> 1: It’s my headcanon that her body doesn’t naturally trend towards being that thin, and that’s part of why she felt a need to diet.
> 
> 2: It bores me that so many people are super thin and lean regardless of what their exact specialties and fighting styles are, particularly the girls. 
> 
> Probably the most bothersome example in my mind is Tsunade. It’s fine if people like Kurenai or Ino are super light and lean… but setting up excuses to have someone with huge boobs and super strength weigh ~49 kg (~108 lbs) just feels so unnecessary to me.
> 
> Plus, with the physical energy side of chakra, you’d think mass would have a moderate bearing on reserves. It’d be limited; only one part of the equation, but still. Also, genetics seem to very unfairly skew how “efficiently” people make chakra. But going by pre-existing biology, fat stores energy and muscle is metabolically active while also having energy stores of its own, so it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to extrapolate that. I also like how it would mean people would have to think carefully about the pros and cons of all of this.
> 
> 3: Tree parallels vs. “delicate flower” parallels.
> 
> 4: More commentary on the contradictory struggle of being a “proper girl” vs a “proper ninja”.


	4. Chapter 3: Gathering Saplings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Chuunin exams are about to begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've removed unrequited Sasuke/Sakura from the pairing tag, because it seems to be kind of accidentally misleading people and I can tell you right now that this isn't supposed to be a Sasusaku fic.

Later in the same day as Sakura’s run-in with Gaara, Sakura met up with Kakashi again in their typical remote spot. Unlike the way things typically went when the whole team was meeting up, he was actually there already, leaving him surprised by her dejected mood when she arrived. She seemed smaller than ever, with the way she stuck to the shadows of the trees and they seemed to nearly swallow her up in their shade. She was closed off and slouching a bit, and she could barely even look at Kakashi.  
  
“Sensei…” Sakura said quietly, still not meeting his eyes. Kakashi perked up, wondering what it was that could be bothering her.   
  
“I think that- that maybe I should go back to being a healer after all,” Sakura hesitantly continued.   
  
“Why? Not that I won’t help you if it’s really what you want, but you already explained at significant length why you didn’t want to be a healer. What changed your mind?” Kakashi asked.   
  
“I-I’m, I’m just not… I can’t be trusted with this power, Sensei. The stronger I get, the more harm I can do. And I’m too- I’m too childish and- and aggressive and just, just-  _ petty _ to properly respect that,” Sakura replied, voice low as she clenched her fists and tried to hold back tears.

“Why do you believe that?” Kakashi asked, carefully avoiding any intonation implying either agreement or disagreement.   
  
“Earlier today, I really messed up. Even when you’ve already told me what a lot of my problems are, I gave into them anyway. I attacked Naruto and Konohamaru. I didn’t have the self-control or discipline not to jump straight to attacking them just because they said things that annoyed me. Then, in the process of that, I got Konohamaru into trouble with some foreign nin, and I just used even more violence to get out of that. I barely ever even  _ tried  _ to handle anything peacefully. What good is a person who just solves everything with their fists?! Let alone a woman who does that!” Sakura plaintively asked, as she clenched her teeth and shrank in on herself even more.

“...So you’re going to go into medicine and predicate it all on a lack of faith in yourself? I’ll be frank, Sakura. That’s not a good motive,” Kakashi said with a sigh, as he crossed his arms and looked at her dead-on.   
  
Sakura just pursed her lips, already starting to see what he meant from the fact that he’d rephrased it that way. Kakashi kept going.   
  
“In some ways, a medic needs more faith in themself than anyone. One small mistake could be disastrous. Beyond that… you shouldn’t use healing as a way to teach yourself some kind of moral lesson. You can’t treat it as some kind of thing you had to shackle yourself to because you’re too undeserving. It’s too easy to build resentment that way. Too easy to beat yourself up and get burnt out. You have to approach healing with passion and genuine desire, or else you’ll only accomplish the exact opposite of what you think you will. The knowledge required to heal isn’t pure. It isn’t inherent good, just as power isn’t inherent evil. It can make you even more dangerous, if you let it,” Kakashi said, sounding almost disconcertingly somber and knowing.   
  
“...How do you know?” Sakura asked quietly. “Or rather, why do you sound like you  _ personally _ know?” Sakura rephrased, taking away any question that she was asking out of doubt. The tone was just too much. There had to be a story there.   
  
There was a silence that may as well have stretched on for years before Kakashi gave his answer. “I had a teammate who was good at healing. Exceptionally good for her age, in fact. She died,” Kakashi said bluntly. Sakura thought she caught him briefly swallowing hard before continuing. “It was my fault. So, for a short while, I figured that if I had the Sharingan, and decent enough chakra control, then it was my ‘duty’ to take up her legacy and focus on healing instead of harm,” Kakashi said quietly. He briefly looked off into the distance before carrying on. 

“But I didn’t even need to go very far with it to realize the exact same thing I’m telling you. That comprehensive knowledge of the human body, of poisons and pressure points, those refinements to chakra control you pick up… That knowledge can make you more dangerous as surely as it can put you in a better position to do good. And I was not in a good place for the latter,” Kakashi finished.   
  
Sakura stiffened. “I… okay, I understand that now, but… The root of the problem is still the same. How do you deal with the weight of your responsibility when you feel like you’re not good enough? When you’re scared you’ll do something stupid and careless again?” she asked, voice small. It was such a strange thing. Wildly uncomfortable to be telling someone, but deeply relieving in the way that she had someone to tell at all.

Kakashi sharply inhaled before speaking again. “I’ll be honest. I’m still not completely sure myself. I do have theories, though. I told myself that I had to keep going to honor the memories of those I’ve lost. But even then… Sakura, do you know much about my clan’s history?” Kakashi asked.   
  
Sakura was a bit ashamed to shake her head, taking his timing and tone to mean that she was supposed to know, but he seemed to be completely expecting it. Without missing a beat, he spoke again. “There’s a reason for that. It’s because my father, well… he was really the first truly notable Hatake, from a shinobi perspective,” Kakashi explained.   
  
“Wait, seriously?” Sakura asked, gaping slightly. She'd always just sort of quietly assumed that the Hatake clan was universally such a big deal that it became their downfall, ending up targeted and singled out by enemy forces like the Senju were.   
  
“Seriously. The real history is right in our family name. Hatake. Farmland. A lineage of farmers. The Hatake clan could manipulate chakra, sure, but they were nothing particularly special until my father. Before then, much of the clan ended up being roped into war as glorified canon fodder. But now, to get to where I’m really going with this, what I’m saying is that it conflicts me. There was value in such humble beginnings, even if Konoha didn’t really see it, and even if the clan itself forgot too,” Kakashi explained, as he seemed to have trouble looking at Sakura.   
  
“Even if I forgot, for a long while...”

Kakashi punctuated that with a long, forlorn sigh, and Sakura briefly thought he might not speak any further, but he briefly worked out a crick in his neck before continuing regardless.

“There were jutsu for all kinds of little things. Enriching the soil, warding off pests, kickstarting germination, increasing the yields, making better compost, curing certain illnesses in the crops... But that’s just the thing. They were little things. Many of them were made for their effects to slowly build up over time as you keep subtly using those techniques with minimal chakra, on a daily basis. It saved energy for the heavier labor. For all their value, the Hatakes were hardly taken seriously in a world that mainly cares about fighting. Sometimes I wonder… who am I, to turn my back on such humble beginnings? To keep up so much bloodshed, to keep  _ reaping  _ instead of  _ sowing?  _ I think, so far, my best answer is this: If it’s for the sake of my comrades, then that’s what makes it worth it,” Kakashi concluded.

“Now hold on just a minute,” Sakura said, suddenly distracted entirely from the issue. “Your family had techniques related to  _ plant life  _ and you just  _ haven’t said anything?!”  _ Sakura asked, growing a bit indignant.   
  
Kakashi pointedly looked away, realizing that there was really no good excuse for the obvious blunder. “I- well, like I said, they’re not flashy or impressive. Especially since they’re not Mokuton, and none of them were for combat. Also, I barely actually know any of them, and I- Well, I don’t really like to think about them too much. Digging up more information would require sifting through some material that would be... emotionally trying, to say the least,” Kakashi explained, almost awkwardly. “However,” Kakashi said more confidently, finally forcing himself to look at Sakura. “You make a good point regardless. I shouldn’t refrain from telling you things just because they make me uncomfortable. With that being said... I actually have an apology for you,” Kakashi continued.   
  
“Huh? What apology?” Sakura asked. Kakashi just sighed at how genuinely perplexed she looked, but he took a deep breath and prepared himself for the worst regardless.   
  
“I shouldn’t have suddenly decided to pay more attention to you right when you did something to  _ make  _ me pay attention. My duties began sooner than that, and I didn’t take them seriously,” Kakashi said, forcing himself to maintain eye contact with Sakura as he did. “I unfairly project things on you and your teammates, things that only get in the way of me doing my job. I jump to too many conclusions. I call myself properly paranoid, but I use that as an excuse for coming at things with a defeatist attitude that doesn’t actually help anyone. And for that, I apologize,” Kakashi said.    
  
Kakashi expected crying or yelling or something. Something bad. What he got instead was worse.   
  
What he got instead was calm.   
  
“I know you're not perfect, but I don’t get why you’d apologize for not taking me seriously sooner?” Sakura asked, innocent and sincere as anything. “Of course you wouldn’t do more for me beforehand. It was obvious that I wasn’t ready. If you’d tried pushing me harder, I probably would’ve whined and slacked off and been constantly concerned with a bunch of unimportant other things. Hair, clothes, Sasuke-kun, getting myself dirty, messing up my skin… Really, I’d have only wasted your time,” Sakura said quietly, starting to fiddle with her hands as she did. “I was already old enough to have known I should’ve been taking things more seriously. I was smart enough to understand that I should’ve been trying harder. It was my choice to ignore that.”

Kakashi grimaced slightly and sharply exhaled at the fact that he could not detect even a  _ trace  _ of dishonesty or sugarcoating in that. It was literally just exactly how she felt, and  _ that _ was  _ worrying _ . 

“Sakura. Please. It’s wrong. I was wrong. And with my clan, I should’ve known that better than anyone," Kakashi replied. He only continued when it was clear Sakura didn't know what to say.  


“Before my father and I had our natural talent to help us, my grandfather was close to working hard enough to make up for it… but he had to give everything to amount to anything. And what did that get him? An early grave, and minimal legacy. I only learned bits and pieces about it from my father, and people who knew my grandfather. And in your case, you had noteworthy attributes all along. You had high intelligence and chakra control. But did people properly value that? Properly encourage you? No. Just like people didn’t properly value a clan that would’ve preferred using chakra to help them farm rather than fight,” Kakashi continued, speaking with such an unusual gravity that Sakura found herself completely riveted..   
  
“...But at least your father got the respect he deserved?” Sakura awkwardly tried, while uncomfortably rocking back and forth on her feet a bit.   
  
Kakashi just gave a short, bitter laugh.   
  
“It haunted him even then. Didn’t have a ‘real clan’ or enough great past deeds from any ancestors to help protect his reputation, so the instant he made a 'mistake' and fell out of favor, people were all too happy to turn on him,” Kakashi was over-casual in the way he said it, as if only remarking offhandedly about the weather. “Too shameful. Killed himself.”   
  
“O-oh,” Sakura stiffly muttered, looking down and away.   
  
She didn’t know what else to do, and she didn’t know if it was really the right time, but that moment was when Sakura finally gave in to one of her urges to hug the man.

It was a bit of an odd process, to put it mildly. Sakura didn’t know how much force to use for him in particular. She automatically assumed she needed to use a lot. Kakashi was utterly rigid for a moment, apparently calculating his next move. But just when Sakura feared she’d made a mistake, and thought about letting go, the gesture was finally reciprocated.   
  
Sakura didn’t know why it made her start crying a bit, but it did, much to her and Kakashi’s mutual mortification. It definitely wasn’t because she disliked it, but they weren’t exactly tears of joy, either. She tried her best to keep it subtle, but Kakashi was infuriatingly perceptive. 

Sakurs decided that saying something would hopefully be less awkward than nothing. “I… I  _ was  _ mad about it. The way you disregarded me at first, that is,” Sakura quietly sniffed. “But. I meant what I said. You didn’t have to apologize. I know you weren’t doing it to be mean,” Sakura murmured.   
  
“Unintended harm is still harm,” Kakashi flatly replied, reaching up to ruffle her hair so carefully it was as if he was worried he’d ruin the moment they were having. Sakura figured it very well could be the case. Kakashi had never opened up to her so much before, and she half-wondered if it was all some kind of way of emotionally preparing himself for his apology. Despite how perceptive he could be, he was still surprisingly awkward with his own emotions.

“I’m fine now,” Sakura quietly said. She didn’t even have to lie about it, the tears were going away quickly. Besides, the fact that he’d been so nice to her and actually accepted her affection really did make her feel a lot better. “I want to focus on training. The one good thing about what I did earlier was that I made a basic version of the chakra armor we talked about. It sucked, and it used way too much, but since I know it’s possible, I just need to refine it,” Sakura said.

Kakashi was quiet, briefly, and Sakura figured he was probably trying to decide whether to just take her change of subject for what it was or try to switch the focus back to her tumultuous emotions. She felt fortunate that he ultimately decided on the former.   
  
“That’s good. I was a little doubtful of the feasibility, since a jutsu whose chakra requires an extra preparatory step to generate seems slower to execute,” Kakashi said, sounding overly-casual as he made a rather obvious effort to not dwell on how emotionally vulnerable they'd just finished being with one another.   
  
“By default, it is slower, but I’ve had months to practice getting Mokuton chakra as quickly as I can,” Sakura replied. Sometimes, she even surprised herself with how little she thought of the process, despite it actually requiring several steps to circumvent a lack of genetic ability. “I think getting so much from a limited amount of plant material might be hard on the plant material itself, though…” she said. She decided that she’d have to fashion some living wooden bracers too, just to be safe. She didn’t have a way of checking on the exact limit to how much she could keep forcing a wooden ring to shove out more natural energy, whenever she wasn’t holding her staff. But she assumed there probably was one. All biological tissue had its limits. Arm bracers would be a bit more conspicuous, but having the ring suddenly crap out on her would be embarrassing  _ and  _ straight up potentially fatal, depending on how badly she needed it at that moment.

“Well, in that case… I look forward to seeing what you can do,” Kakashi said, in a tone that made Sakura absolutely sure he was smirking beneath the mask. Probably planning something at least mildly evil, while he was at it.

So, the ensuing week was pretty much nothing but more training, including Sakura’s mad rush to figure out a good seal sequence for utilizing her Mokuton armor technique more efficiently. Fortunately, at least the forearm bracers were easy to make. 

She fashioned them to outwardly look like they weren't still conspicuously alive, and had simply been carved in a normal fashion. Even down to some sakura flower designs that she'd used nothing but Mokuton to etch into the  _ seemingly _ carved and polished surface. She upgraded her staff to the same sort of faux-carved design.

She kicked herself for not adding the bracers sooner though, since having more living wood to use besides just a ring and a staff made for an immediate improvement in generating Mokuton chakra. She'd just been too worried that it would start looking too obvious. Having the new source constantly so close to her hands also made it more convenient than having her staff constantly in-hand. With that in mind, she extended the principle to similarly decorated shin-guards and new sandals too. The kunoichi course actually came in handy for the task, since she knew just enough about modifying clothes to neatly add some padding materials anywhere that risked chafing or causing general discomfort.

If you were from Konoha, you were going to be standing right on top of plant material a lot, after all. Making it easier to use her feet for Mokuton too seemed promising.

Once all that was in place, all that was left was studying and practicing hand seal sequences to the point where her fingers ached.

* * *

Once again, Kakashi was quietly floored when Sakura managed to pull through with the jutsu. She’d cut it right down to the last minute, because when Kakashi went home the day before everyone would need to start the exams, she hadn’t quite figured it out. But by the time he saw her the next day, she excitedly reported that she had. He just hoped that she hadn’t sacrificed much sleep to do it.   
  
Kakashi hadn’t been  _ quite  _ as late as usual, so they spent that morning testing the technique with Naruto and Sasuke on the team’s usual training grounds, to work out more of its finer details.

The initiation sequence wasn’t designed to be confusing, but it was impressively economical. Dragon, Ox, Dog, Snake. Strong and refined, while also being enduring, stable, and flexible. A jutsu she’d simply christened “Strong Spirit”. Fitting, since she’d managed to get it to a point where if you didn’t know any better, it looked like barely anything happened after she used the jutsu. The only sign visible to the unaided eye was a brief, subtle green glow around Sakura’s body at the moment of activation, and then the same glow briefly showing up whenever an attack connected.

Strong Spirit didn’t generate anything visibly plant-like, it was merely pure Mokuton chakra carefully molded into a reinforcing aura around her body. Even without visibly taking on any wood-like qualities, the Mokuton chakra was naturally superior in defensive ability to a similar density of normal chakra. Being partially Doton gave it that benefit, but it also had the yielding, shock-absorbing properties of Suiton, and the general vigor of the natural energy that was incorporated.   
  
Of course, it had vulnerabilities. Every time it mitigated damage, it used up some of the chakra in the aura, and it also obviously meant that she had less chakra for everything else, including regeneration.    
  
It was also possible to exploit how exactly it was set up. To better handle blunt attacks and permit ease of movement, the protective aura worked something like a defensive “putty”. It was generally soft, flexible, and easy to breathe through, but became hard and firm in response to strong impact. Rather than bouncing off, a normal piercing or cutting attack would generally lose momentum and get “stuck”, or at least not pierce Sakura as deeply as it should’ve. A typical blunt attack would have its force absorbed and distributed evenly, greatly reducing damage.   
  
The problem was that a particularly strong force could still overcome it. In particular, a mighty enough blunt impact would simply shatter it. A strong enough piercing or sawing attack was also capable of getting through. Besides that, it also did pretty much nothing about being restrained, gassed, or certain other methods of indirect harm.   
  
On the bright side, it was still strong enough that when Kakashi briefly tested it, he deemed it capable of totally shrugging off the typical punches, kicks, and projectile weaponry of average high-genin or low-chuunin level ninja. They tested out how  _ long  _ it could hold up under an assault of that level based on Sakura deploying the technique with about 10% of her chakra reserves. That seemed to be the minimum amount she needed to use for it to work.   
  
The result was that it apparently held up for just barely over thirty seconds of non-stop assault at that level, achieved by Kakashi holding back dramatically on the amount of chakra and strength behind his strikes.   
  
Another two tests, using the same percentage against Naruto and then against Sasuke, both instructed to try their best, yielded results indicating that both of them could break through in roughly fifteen seconds… Both were happy for the knowledge that they were apparently that much above-average in the strength of their taijutsu, but the happiness wasn’t to last for any longer than a moment..   
  
Kakashi told them pretty quickly that Naruto had managed in 14 seconds, and Sasuke has managed in 16 seconds… which was almost enough to get them to start a fistfight, with how much Naruto was bragging and taunting, and how much Sasuke was scowling and grousing, all over a measly two seconds.   
  
Sakura just sighed. Sure, it was surprising that Sasuke “lost”, but did they really have to fight so hard about it?   
  
From there, Kakashi recharged her reserves with a chakra transfer so that they could see the technique’s resilience against elements and singular, particularly strong blows.   
  
Sakura kind of wished he’d give her chakra more often, but she already knew that routinely giving someone chakra wasn’t actually good if you wanted to help them increase their reserves. If you did it too often, it could potentially do just the opposite, making a person’s chakra system become “complacent”, and actually  _ slower  _ at increasing its capacity and replenishment speed.

Against a high-power strike from Kakashi’s taijutsu, delivered with his full weight behind it to increase the momentum, Sakura’s 10% Strong Spirit cloak shattered in one hit. It burst into a briefly glowing cloud of little grass-green chakra shards, unable to be reclaimed as they rapidly destabilized and diffused into the atmosphere. But at same time, she was only lightly harmed in the process. It was good to know. It was also interesting to note that the cloak seemed to have a property of heavily dampening kinetic energy instead of just blocking it. Under normal circumstances, even a blocked hit with that much force still should’ve sent Sakura’s lightweight body flying a few meters, or at least seriously knocked her to the ground hard, depending on how well she braced herself. Instead, she only got knocked back in a relatively ordinary fashion, and only even fell because it put her off-balance.   
  
Then, they had Sasuke test fire jutsu of varying strengths on her, doing their best to set up basic safety measures for the whole thing. Kakashi converted the ground beneath her into a bunch of sand, poised to use it to smother her right away if the jutsu did too much damage. He also had some healing jutsu in his repertoire, if necessary.    
  
Kakashi and Naruto both found themselves tensing at the experiment to see what would happen if Sakura took a full-on Great Fireball at Sasuke’s maximum strength, silently wondering if it’d been a good idea after all…   
  
As Sakura got into a defensive position, hesitantly gave the sign that she was ready, and the flames swallowed her without remorse, Kakashi found himself swallowing hard. Had he done the right thing? Was it too much for her after all? Was he pushing her too hard? Was- was he…

As the fire cleared, Sakura found herself being stared down by all of Team 7, their mouths all gaping.   
  
She was covered in a sheen of sweat and panting uncomfortably, having still felt a nigh-unbearable level of heat. But that was it.    
  
Other than that, she stood completely unharmed. The cloak hadn’t even actually broken, although Sakura could feel that it was on its last legs.

Sakura was distantly aware of Naruto excitedly cheering and shouting, but internally, she was too busy with her brain going at a mile a minute. She’d kind of expected that Mokuton would be weak to Katon, and that she’d take some actual damage, but she couldn’t comment on that out loud. Why didn’t it happen? Did it inherit the elemental upsides of both of its constituent natures, despite its theme being wood and plants? She supposed that could be possible, it wasn’t like she had a truly perfect grasp of how all elemental interactions went. She still had a shaky grasp on why exactly Raiton was strong against Doton, for one thing. And thinking in more literal terms, wood didn’t exactly burn uncontrollably unless it was sufficiently dry. Was it just that Strong Spirit was a “higher level” technique than Great Fireball, allowing it to bypass the disadvantage that way?

Part of Sakura even wondered if maybe Sasuke had worried for her and held back a little, which briefly filled her with warmth. Oh, that would be so considerate of him! So gentlemanly! So-   
  
Sakura looked up towards Sasuke, and took one look at the boy’s grimace and clenching fists. One look at his furrowed brows. One look at the tension in his shoulders. Immediately she flinched away, because immediately she knew that her fantasized motives were wrong.   
  
Sasuke had genuinely tried his hardest, and instead of being glad he didn’t hurt her… he just seemed  _ upset  _ that his technique wasn’t strong enough to beat hers.

He schooled his body language into aloofness soon enough, but it was too late. Sakura saw. It left her with a strange, strange feeling, a feeling that’d briefly reared its head every now and again but always been quickly offset by something else. But it came again, with nothing else strong enough to distract her from it anymore.  
  
It was the realization that there were things she was _better at_ than Sasuke. That was strange enough to think about, but even _stranger_ was the ensuing realization that _Sasuke didn’t like it._

What to  _ do?  _ What to even  _ make of that?  _ She didn’t want to make him unhappy, but…   
  
To some extent, she’d done it all  _ for him  _ in the first place! For the team! For everyone’s safety!    
  
So if he didn't like it, what did that mean? Was he going to be unhappy with her either way, then _?  _ Jealous if she excelled, irritated and dismissive if she didn’t?   
  
That… that wasn’t fair! How was she meant to compromise with that?! What, carefully modulating all of her improvements and carefully tracking all of Sasuke’s progress, always meticulously ensuring that she was just a little bit worse at everything than he was? Bullshit! She didn’t want to do that, even if Sasuke  _ was  _ cute! 

But because it was Sasuke, she held her complaints in and simply put her focus back into experimenting with the jutsu. After all, she didn’t  _ want  _ to be angry with Sasuke. She didn’t  _ want  _ to indulge thoughts that might lead to resentment.   
  
So, more tests it was.

After another couple of experiments, Team 7 learned the vitally important fact that a Strong Spirit with higher percentages of chakra infused wasn’t actually that much more powerful in terms of the strongest singular hit it could take. Sakura’s skill level apparently imposed a cap on that, limiting her mostly to just how long it held up against what it could  _ already handle _ . It was a time limit that increased in a directly linear, proportionate manner. To improve the maximum strength as opposed to only the maximum time limit, the only viable option seemed to be more training and actual refinement of the technique.

However, Sakura  _ was  _ at least good enough that Strong Spirit also had an offensive advantage. With the proper timing, Sakura could briefly stretch it with enough speed and force to increase the actual range of her punches and kicks by up to a foot. Furthermore, the shape of the stretched aura could become sharp, making a punch into a surprise stab, and focusing the energy of the strike to a smaller point.   
  
An even further advantage was that it was no weaker when used by a clone, meaning that a shadow clone became more stable and durable. The disadvantage there was that such tactics still used generally impractical levels of chakra, but it could be a potential emergency option.

Sakura had tried several times to go even further and fling chunks of the aura outward as a projectile, but that barely worked. Neither did shaping the aura in further detail. Any part that separated immediately diffused into the atmosphere. Her attempts to do it better came with heavy drawbacks that kind of canceled out the benefits. Her first idea was to encourage more power and stability with extra hand seals, by repeating the Dog section two more times to form a “pack” of them, and then immediately following with Boar before still finishing with Snake. It kind of worked, but it caused the cloak to constrict itself too densely and firmly around her body, which caused her both pain and difficulty moving properly.

Trying to throw in a Monkey seal before Snake to counteract that problem with more flexibility also failed. As did scrapping the whole idea and just going for more power. Replacing Dragon with Tiger failed, as did trying to put Dragon and Tiger together to “fight” and generate more intensity. Unfortunately, Sakura was out of time. She didn’t just need better hand seals, she needed more training in general. As she was, trying to rely purely on hand seals to iron out the flaws without creating new ones probably meant that she’d need to find a long, complicated, unwieldy string of them.   
  
Whether Sakura liked it or not, the Exams were starting.   
  
But there was one last thing she had to do, especially since her creation of a new technique was sobered by how Sasuke still wasn’t responding well to her, which bruised her ego enough for her to know she had to do what needed to be done before her pride could stop her.   
  
She had to apologize to Naruto.   
  
At the end of all the testing rounds, she approached him somewhat apprehensively. Naruto seemed totally oblivious to whatever she was planning.   
  
“Sakura-chan! Great job with the new jutsu, it’s super cool!” Naruto said, but Sakura just smiled weakly before launching right into what she wanted to say. If she let herself get pulled into a different subject, she’d never say it.    
  
“Thanks, but I really wanted to say… Well, um, I’m sorry for what happened last week, Naruto. When I hit you and then started chasing you. That was wrong. I overreacted,” Sakura told him, fidgeting awkwardly with her hands all the while.    
  
“Oh, is that all? I’m already over that! It was no big deal!” Naruto replied with a laugh, while sheepishly scratching at the back of his head.   
  
“Even if you say that, it was wrong for more reasons than just how it made you feel. I realized that if I really want to become stronger, then I need to be more responsible about it, too. I can’t go around resorting to force so quickly just because I get mad. What if someone actually gets really hurt? So, from now on… I’m setting a rule that I can’t hit you unless we’re sparring or something. No matter how mad I am. If I try to do it anyway, you have permission to tell me off for it,” Sakura told him.   
  
Naruto just blinked confusedly a couple of times. “That’s really cool of you, but you don’t have to do all that stuff with me! Really! It was nothing!” he said.

Sakura thought back to how she’d similarly viewed Kakashi’s apology as unnecessary, and just blinked a couple of times as she once again realized that she may have had more in common with Naruto than she thought.

Of course, that was immediately followed by the thought that if they were  _ truly  _ similar, then Naruto was waving it all off because he was secretly blaming himself for everything…   
  
But dwelling on  _ that  _ for too long was  _ all kinds  _ of uncomfortable, so she neatly side-stepped it.

* * *

  
It wasn't long after Team 7 arrived to the place where they were supposed to register that they ended up in a crowd of fellow applicants who all turned out to be huddled around the wrong room number, as revealed by some weird boy with a bowlcut and a green jumpsuit who saw through the simple genjutsu like it was nothing.   
  
Sakura was both impressed and a little irritated that she hadn’t gotten a chance to show her improvements with genjutsu detection, but she was curious to note that besides the easy genjutsu detection, the boy was  _ strong.  _ One of the older guys blocking the doorway tried to kick him upon the truth being found out, at a speed that seemed entirely too fast to avoid.    
  
The boy in green caught his leg as if it were barely moving at all, not being forced back so much as a centimeter in the process. His expression was dead serious, lacking even an ounce of fear.   
  
“What’s with that strength?” Sasuke said quietly to himself, but Sakura was at just as much of a loss as him.   
  
“Idiot… you weren’t supposed to let anyone see what you can do this soon,” came the subdued, frustrated voice of a boy who Sakura faintly recognized as a Hyuuga, although she was unfamiliar with him beyond that. Apparently, he was referring to the boy in green.   
  
Once the bowlcut boy made sure there would be no more surprise attacks, he turned around…   
  
And immediately met Sakura’s eyes.   
  
And immediately began sporting a huge dopey grin and a massive blush, before giving a brash declaration.   
  
“Hello! My name, sweet spring maiden, is Rock Lee! Please, may I have yours?! And perhaps a date, as well?! You can count on me! I’ll protect you until you die!”   
  
That immediately got Naruto’s attention, and Sakura sulked a bit to see that he clearly cared way more than Sasuke, who just kind of snorted derisively.   
  
“What do you think you’re trying with Sakura-chan, huh?!” Naruto yelled, immediately pressing himself into Lee’s space with furrowed brows and a deep scowl.    
  
The boy didn’t seem to mind all that much either way, only stopping to briefly tell him that it was rude to invade someone’s personal space before looking back to Sakura with the same dopey, blushy expression.   
  
“So it's Sakura, then! A lovely name! And I see that you’re another who sees the glory of wearing green! Truly, a wonderful outfit for a wonderful girl!” Lee said, as Sakura just shrank back a bit, cheeks growing hotter and hotter.   
  
Sure, she was weirded out and embarrassed, but deep down, she was a touch flattered too. Admittedly, no one else had ever complimented her new wardrobe besides Naruto, who didn’t count because he’d probably have done it no matter what. Normally, being weirded out would have a dramatic lead over the flattery, especially because she’d want to try and put on an exaggerated show of disliking Lee’s attention so that Sasuke could see how loyal she was.   
  
But after what’d happened with Sasuke earlier, and her firsthand experience of how much trouble her immaturity caused, she was thinking differently. She was also starting to see more of what Kakashi had been talking about when it came to her insecurity leading to other behavioral flaws. Before, she’d have rudely overreacted even with no Sasuke around, because she’d be so overly desperate to seem like she was “too good” for Lee, just like she’d been so desperate to prove she was “too good” for Naruto.   
  
Sakura resolved to try and be gentle with the whole thing. Sure, he wasn’t handsome, but he wasn’t really trying to be mean, so there was no reason to be mean back. Besides, she could at least honestly say that his strength and bravery were pretty admirable.

“Sorry, I um, I’m not interested in dating you... But I think we could still be friends, if you’d be okay with that?” Sakura replied, hoping Lee wouldn’t take it too hard.   
  
It turned out she had nothing to worry about, since Lee immediately brightened as if she’d actually said yes. “Yes! You honor me with your friendship!” the boy replied. “If I caused you any discomfort, I sincerely apologize!” he continued with a stiff bow.   
  
Sakura just blinked a couple of times, feeling a bit flustered by how earnest he was being. Still, he seemed like a nice enough guy, for a weirdo. “I mean, it was a little over the top, but it’s not that big of a deal,” she replied, with a nervous chuckle.   
  
“Sakura-san! Your honesty is greatly appreciated!” Lee replied, looking at her with starry eyes. It was odd, but honestly a bit endearing. Sure, he wasn't particularly attractive, but she couldn't be so shallow as to judge him on that. “I wish you luck in the exams!”   
  
“You too, Lee-san,” Sakura replied, before doing her best to beat a hasty retreat with Sasuke and Naruto in tow. Mainly because she was getting uncomfortable with all the people still around her, and because both Sasuke and Naruto were obviously in a foul mood.

* * *

  
Of course, it just couldn’t last long.   
  
Lee ended up following them just to challenge Sasuke to a fight, only for Naruto to get fussy about it and insist that he could fight in Sasuke’s stead.   
  
Of course, Naruto got absolutely demolished without Lee even really trying. Naruto charged, and Lee just smoothly used the momentum of the charge against him, sending him gracelessly tumbling to the floor before knocking him into a wall as if he were just an annoying bug.   
  
That got Sasuke more interested, but Sakura was simultaneously surprised and not  _ that  _ surprised to see that he also got completely thrashed. Inner quietly supplied her with thoughts of how foolish it was to automatically assume your kekkei genkai could get you through everything, and the general arrogance of underestimating an unfamiliar opponent, along with how she envied Sasuke for even being strong enough to have gotten used to thinking that way... but Sakura pushed them down, doing her best not to think disparagingly of Sasuke even if he  _ had  _ been awfully rude lately.

The only reason things didn’t go even worse for Sasuke was that the fight was stopped right in the middle of Lee using some kind of finishing technique by the arrival of some weird talking tortoise, and then some even weirder buff guy. He looked for all the world like a bigger, older version of Lee himself, besides the eyes.    
  
Apparently, Lee was in trouble because the finishing move was actually forbidden. Once the tortoise and the buff guy had thoroughly admonished Lee in the weirdest ways possible, most of which involved manly crying, he was running off with them to some place Sakura could only guess at. She didn’t envy him for being told he’d have to run 500 laps.   
  
In the brief ensuing silence, Sasuke sulked. Sakura tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t just get him mad at her again, but Naruto beat her to it.

“I guess the Uchiha clan isn’t what it used to be…” Naruto said a bit after the fact, posing in a way that faked nonchalance and speaking offhandedly, as if to no one in particular.   
  
Sasuke was promptly in front of him in the blink of an eye, for the express purpose of kicking him in the crotch. Hard.   
  
Naruto fell like a ton of bricks, clutching the area while hissing and balling up in pain. Sakura didn’t have it in her to feel bad.   
  
“You bast-” Naruto managed to rasp out, before Sasuke sharply interrupted with a glare so cold that Naruto briefly went as still as a statue.   
  
“Naruto. Shut up _right now,_ before I _ burn your tongue out, _ ” Sasuke spat, before turning his back on him and stalking off to the opposite walls. It was pretty obvious that he’d be leaving entirely if it weren’t for the fact that he still needed to be there.

Sakura at least waited until Naruto shakily stood up again to say her piece. She may have said she wouldn't hit him, but she'd never said anything about not yelling at him.  


“You deserved that,” she impassively informed him.  
  
“Why?” Naruto had the nerve to say, bottom lip quivering. Sakura’s eye twitched, and she resisted the urge to put him back on the floor herself.  
  
“Why? _Why?_ You insult someone’s _murdered clan_ to their face and then have the nerve to be such a selfish little sniveling toddler that you ask _why?!_ What is _wrong_ with you?!” Sakura shot back, practically boiling as she clenched her fists ever tighter.  
  
Naruto’s face fell and his whole stance seemed to deflate as the words sunk in. “Oh…”  
  
“Yeah, that’s right, **_Oh._** ” Sakura snapped. “You’ve been at Sasuke-kun’s throat for _months,_ despite the fact that he almost _died_ saving your sorry life! Something he wouldn’t have had to do if you hadn’t had the IQ of a fucking pebble and decided to go inside of the ice mirror jutsu too, by the way! And why have you even been acting like this?! Sasuke-kun may make you mad, but you can’t treat him as if he’s the root of all evil forever! From what I see, it’s mainly _your fault_ that you two fight so much _! Yours!_ Because you’re such a fragile, insecure, little bitch-ass _infant_ that you just can’t fucking _stand_ it when he gets more attention than you, and you think that anything and everything he does is just to make him ‘look good’, even things that are for _your sake!_ Probably because you’re too fucking braindead to even fathom that maybe Sasuke-kun just does it because it’s what _any_ half-decent person would do! Or are you just fucking projecting?! Maybe _you’re_ the one who’s ridiculously hung up on what makes you look good! Try _that_ on for size! It would certainly explain why you tried to pretend that I’m your fucking girlfriend!”   
  
Naruto wilted even further. Sakura kept going, undeterred.  
  
“You really want people to think you’re so fucking oppressed, don’t you? You really think you’re just such a tragic underdog compared to Sasuke that you get to say and do whatever the fuck you want, huh?! You! That’s **_rich!_** Yeah, you may be a lonely, insecure weirdo, and yeah you may struggle with certain things, but you aren’t the only fucking lonely orphan in the world! And it’s not all bad! There are obviously still people that like you! You still have a metric fuckton of chakra for whatever reason! You got that Inari kid to like you despite the fact that you yelled at him like a total bitch! You got a fucking bridge named after you! You bitch and moan non-fucking-stop about Sasuke’s skills, but you can do all kinds of shit he can’t, and you still learned to tree walk just about as fast as him! I know you’ve hung out with Shikamaru, Kiba, and Choji too sometimes! You have those little kids who like being around you! Iruka-sensei likes you, too! So _fuck off_ with your selfish, insensitive bullshit! I _assure_ you, Naruto, that there is _nothing in the fucking world_ that gives you the right to say something like that to _anyone!_ And no one’s obligated to like or respect a person who says shit like that! No one owes a person like that anything! What, you think you’re going to be a Hokage who can just magically _get away_ with spouting shit like that?! Get a fucking clue, dumbass! Say shit like that again and I’ll never fucking _speak_ to you again, _do you hear me?!_ ” Sakura shouted, getting increasingly close to Naruto’s face.

Naruto was too busy trying not to cry to verbally respond at first, so he just nodded stiffly.   


“ ‘M sorry…” he finally managed to choke out.   
  
“Don’t apologize to  _ me, _ ” Sakura shortly replied.

Naruto nodded slowly, just once, and went over to Sasuke.   
  
Sakura half expected Sasuke to just verbally bite his head off too, or hit him again, and she wouldn’t have really been opposed to either.   
  
Instead, he stood quietly as Naruto gave his apology.   
  
“I shouldn’t have said that… I thought it would kinda motivate you because you’d want to prove me wrong, but… that’s actually just a mean thing to do. I could’ve just tried to motivate you in a normal way to  _ start  _ with, if my ego weren’t so damn big that I was too much of a coward to actually bother being nice. I’m sorry,” Naruto forced out, hardly able to look Sasuke in the eye as he said it all.

Sasuke didn’t say anything, but he did at least wordlessly walk back over to Sakura with Naruto. That had to count for something.   
  
Sakura definitely hoped so.   


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want Sakura to be nicer, generally speaking, but… Naruto kinda deserved a wake-up call.
> 
> I feel like the earliest parts of the series hadn’t actually decided that the Uchiha Massacre was a thing yet, and it’s weird.
> 
> Why do I think that? For one, because of how Naruto completely gets off the hook and never apologizes for saying that shit about the Uchiha in canon, even though it’s one of the most awful things he’s ever said in retrospect. Canon actually uses the Uchiha insult in this chapter after Sasuke loses to Lee as this weird ass reverse psychology lead into encouraging Sasuke to try harder by first tearing him down. In turn, it creates this unsaid implication that Naruto is somehow so perceptive and understanding of Sasuke, being able to motivate him like this. Which is just… so backwards to me? So no, no more being implicitly rewarded for that. That's not perceptive, that's being a jerk.
> 
> Writing these parts makes me see why there’s such a common trend of people just writing most of Team 7's shittiness out of the story. I can’t even be mad, this chapter was difficult and exhausting purely due to how tiresome it gets to have to repeatedly call out how awful all the members of Team 7 can be. I’m mainly only doing it this way so I don’t have to do it as often later, because later I can just be like “Remember this? Yeah, in this universe they already learned their lesson, moving on now.”
> 
> You can already see that in how Sakura now responds to Lee, because If I already had to suffer through this much, then I wasn’t having her shit on him and act like she’s too good for him just because he came on too strong.
> 
> Plus, a combat-oriented Sakura becoming friends with him, and by extension, eventually all of Team Gai? Good Shit.
> 
> Also, we'll get to why exactly Lee was able to see through that genjutsu. I have a whole Thing on how it works. (Also, it ends up being a bit important that Sasuke did not ever get a chance to praise Sakura for her genjutsu skill in this universe)
> 
> And about the Hatake clan: Yeah, I know the fandom loves to assert that Hatakes were historically really powerful and awesome (and just about always wolf associated), but bear with me here.
> 
> Why? One, just for the sake of not feeling like I’m being too much of a copycat. Two, because this symbolism synergizes with Mokuton Sakura in ways I really like. Three, I feel it benefits Kakashi’s character to have a more humbled background. 
> 
> I want to change his arc’s progression around some in general, since I wasn’t super satisfied with it. To briefly go over some issues I had:
> 
> 1: I don’t think he should’ve ever been Hokage. I just don’t think it suits him.
> 
> 2: The narrative often talks him up and then turns around and makes him kinda lame in comparison. The claim that he has a thousand jutsu is so overblown, and tbh I think both Rasengan and Chidori are overrated. They've got so many practical flaws that they're really more useful for Kishimoto himself, for the sake of having flashy trademark techniques to market, and making visually impactful scenes. Kakashi barely bothered to improve anything about Chidori's true issues in like fifteen years, just more raw power/speed. This stuff wouldn’t even bother me if they just let the feats speak for themselves and didn’t keep over-hyping him.
> 
> 3: How canon handles Kakashi and Obito’s interactions is… whatever, to me. Yeah, Obito’s supposed death as a kid was impactful, and their fight scene was some cool shit, but otherwise? Honestly not a big fan. I’m technically into KakaObi, but only in fanon or theory. Similarly, I only actually like any of the Team 7 ships in theory, when their interpersonal interactions are handled differently from canon.


	5. Chapter 4: A Shoot Among The Thicket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura takes the first test of the exams, then has a talk with her mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still shocked by all the attention this gets. I mean, I did already notice that Sakura rewrite fics obviously get a lot of attention, but it just hits different when your own take on it does well.
> 
> As a fair warning, I don’t always read the comments very quickly, because while I do appreciate comments, seeing the comments number go up still makes me really anxious thanks to some bad past experiences. (Mostly fanfiction.net, AO3 has never really given me problems in this regard, besides a couple of rare but obvious trolls) But at the time of posting this, I’m all caught up. It just takes me a few days sometimes. So if you ever want to pick my brain or just get a faster response out of me, my tumblr is bug-the-chicken-nug, I’m almost always there if I’m not asleep or working.
> 
> It’s interesting that I saw different comments saying that Sakura projected on Naruto during her rant, because while that wasn’t my intention, I do feel that Sakura and Naruto are actually very similar people in certain ways, which ends up reading pretty similarly. The key difference is that Sakura is ashamed and repressive of many of the flaws that most resemble Naruto, particularly in Part 1.
> 
> I honestly somewhat regret playing up flaws so much and having this story be as negative as it is, but I began to realize that various plans I have just don’t work the same otherwise. 
> 
> I could go on and on, but that’s what the story’s for. So, here we go.

As much as Sakura had felt that she’d done the right thing in yelling at Naruto in the moment she did it, it really didn’t take long at all for her to grow uncomfortable with the awkward silence that ensued. 

Of course, Sasuke didn’t seem to give a single solitary shit that she’d yelled at Naruto for him. Naruto was uncharacteristically quiet. So that just left her with her own thoughts, mostly. There’d probably been a better way to say all of that. She didn’t- she didn’t _hate_ Naruto, no matter what she said. It was just, she’d been _so sick_ of him and Sasuke fighting for _months straight_ even _after_ she’d seen full well that they obviously could work together and get along if push came to shove.

Plus, even though she threatened him with never speaking to him again, part of her actually quite desperately didn’t want it to come to that. Part of her just wanted to finally feel like Team 7 was actually a good team. Somewhere where she’d finally feel a sense of belonging, like she’d used to with Ino before that stupid decision to-  
  
Well, there was no point thinking of _that_ and getting herself feeling even more ashamed and upset, but the thought came up again unbidden when she soon found herself in a large room with Naruto, Sasuke, about a hundred other people, and _Ino herself_ .  
  
Sakura tensed and grimaced at how she immediately flung herself at Sasuke, getting all up in his personal space and hugging him from behind in an infuriating manner.  
  
“Let go of Sasuke-kun, Ino-buta!” Sakura reprimanded.  
  
“Or what? You’ll get jealooouuuss?” Ino goaded.  
  
“That’s besides the point! You don’t just run up and start hugging people without permission! It’s rude!” Sakura chided.  
  
Ino flinched, suddenly pensive, seeming to realize Sakura actually kind of had a point as Sasuke shoved her off, but she didn’t dare admit as much. “Well, you’re one to talk, with all the times you’ve tried to get all up in Sasuke-kun’s space!” she shot back.  
  
It was Sakura’s turn to flinch, because Ino had a point too. Not that she would openly admit it either. “You’re just exaggerating! At least I _ask_ first!” Sakura snapped.  
  
“ _Ooh, look who’s playing miss goody two-shoes…”_ Inner self-deprecatingly drawled. Sakura silently told her to shut up. “ _Because apparently we haven’t had enough of being a self-righteous know-it-all lately, huh?”_ Again, Sakura told her to shut up.

“Whatever, Forehead,” Ino huffily replied, rolling her eyes. “I know your deal. I’m not getting sucked into your little game where you suddenly decide to get on your moral high horse solely to one-up people, then jump right back off when you think no one’s looking,” she continued, as Sakura briefly went wide-eyed and drew back, desperately hoping it wasn’t too obvious that she was paling at the cutting remark.  
  
Sakura hated it when Ino got the last word, but she honestly had no idea what to say to that, so she just gave her best dismissive scoff and let the argument end there. Dramatically turning to face away from Ino would also hide just how blatantly upsetting that comment had been.

“ _Because it was true,”_ Inner snidely told her. Sakura did her best not to listen. Even if, maybe it was true, what was she _supposed_ to do? Being the smart, responsible girl was her only real strong point, her first defense mechanism, the only area where she ever really felt confident.  
  
Besides that… she just- just wasn’t really much of anything.  
  
“ _Yeah, but that doesn’t have to_ **_stay_** _true, idiot! What do you_ ** _think_** _the last few months have been for?!”_ Inner chided. Sakura took a deep breath and held her head tall. Inner was right. If she wanted to get better, she had to actually _do something,_ not just wallow and make excuses.

Eventually, an intimidating man arrived at the front of the room. Ibiki Morino, apparently. Proctor for the first section of the exam.   
  
Sakura was glad if only because starting meant that she would be forced to think of something other than how weirdly quiet Naruto was still being. Normally, she’d definitely have expected him to get loud and do something to draw attention to himself… but he’d done no such thing.   
  
Was he taking what she said _that_ hard? Half the reason she’d been so harsh was that she knew full well that Naruto was one of the most hard-headed people she’d ever met. Most of what she did or said to him typically just slid off of him like water off a duck’s back. Subtlety didn't work on him, and he'd been blowing off all of her other, smaller attempts to straighten him out for months.  
  
Shit. She’d wanted him to take more responsibility for his actions, be less tactless, and try harder to get along with Sasuke. She’d never wanted him to become a mope.

But he’d get over it soon, right? He was Naruto, after all. He always got back up. Right?  
  
Sakura just hoped that would still hold true as the first phase of the exams commenced.

* * *

It turned out to be a written test, which was absolutely the worst thing Naruto could've been saddled with.

Even more guilt crept into Sakura's mind. He was fresh off of her once again treating him like crap, and now he had to find a way to get through this? Gods, he was probably expecting her to yell at him again when he failed.  
  
The test was easy enough, at least for Sakura, but she could absolutely tell that most people would seriously have problems with it. The questions were some seriously advanced stuff, including things that they never actually went over in the academy.

They _apparently_ weren't supposed to cheat, but Sakura wondered about that. If they really weren't supposed to cheat, why did they explain that the scoring system was only going to deduct a couple of points each time they were caught? Wasn't cheating always an instant zero?

Kakashi had told her that some of her faults included a tendency of holding herself back and being poor with thinking on her feet in spite of her intelligence, and she figured it made sense that a test for ninjas wouldn't _actually_ want to just see how good you were at straightforward rules. Being a true ninja _wasn't_ all that straightforward at all. Wave had taught her _plenty_ about that. Besides, it was still a controlled environment. She didn't have to contend with all the overthinking and self-doubt that made her so ironically poor with quick strategies in the first place.

So it was settled then. She _had_ to figure out a good way to help her team with the test, especially Naruto. It was the least she could do. 

Once Sakura was finished with all nine questions, with a good amount of time to spare, she began focusing on how to cheat on behalf of Naruto and Sasuke. Sakura suddenly kind of wished that she'd decided to follow up on genjutsu after all, but she had to agree with Kakashi that she still wasn't good enough under pressure to capitalize on genjutsu in combat situations. If she'd done it anyway, she could basically just get Naruto and Sasuke to hallucinate the answers, and it'd look really subtle.

She'd have to think of something else.

Immediately, she thought about the shadow clone technique. It did copy whatever you had with you, right? From there, didn't that mean that it could also copy _only_ things you had with you?

With the proper focus, it could stand to reason that she could also prevent the formation of most if not all of the smoke it made. That smoke typically formed due to wasted chakra, or willfully, as a battle tactic.

Plan in mind, Sakura first experimented with her own pencil. After a moment of concentration, focusing on the pencil and _only_ the pencil, she managed to call up a perfect copy. Without hand seals, at that. She doubted she could do the same in a fight, because it noticeably took at least four times longer to get the proper focus and chakra flow without a seal. But in a quiet, controlled environment, it was a completely reasonable demand. Even better, because it was such a small object and displaced so little air, it hardly made any noise upon materialization.

From there, she thought about how she would get answers all the way to the others… But they weren't _that_ far apart, and she'd seen on many occasions that Naruto's clones could be summoned at a pretty good distance, seemingly _automatically,_ if closer spaces weren't available. 

So, the next quick test was to replicate that intentionally.

She once again focused on her pencil, but put more focus into her chakra too, trying to prevent it from coalescing into a physical form before she wanted it to.

That part was harder, because the chakra came out _fast,_ and it was already primed to form what the user wanted. Stopping it from doing that _and_ making sure it stopped right where she wanted was much easier said than done, which meant that getting the range right was a pain in the ass.

Six tests went by with her just aware enough of the position of each cloned pencil to know that she was getting it _completely_ wrong. She only meant to have them materialize on the floor a couple of meters away, but they'd end up either barely going anywhere or totally on the other side of the room. At the very least, it barely used any chakra to make fake pencils, and no one seemed to notice what she was doing. For good measure, she pretended to still be writing while she was actually focusing, since her hands were free.

Before trying a seventh time, she tried a different approach. She already noticed that when she focused, she seemed to be vaguely aware of every cloned pencil without actually looking at them. That could probably apply to the chakra before it fully materialized into an object too, then. So, rather than letting the chakra shoot out at top speed and trying to perfectly time it, she started visualizing and molding it differently. Instead of a sudden burst, it would be a slow, stable bubble, designed to float steadily to where she needed it to.

The new method was even slower to perform, and the travel speed of the bubble itself was vastly inferior, so once again it probably wasn't practical for fighting any time soon. On the bright side, she was right about still being able to tell where the bubble was, and it was immediately way more reliable. Less like shooting chakra out of a cannon and more like carefully delivering a "package" of it, as she made the outer layer of her bubble briefly suppress the chakra's natural attempts at taking an actual shape.

Four more tries, and all but the first pencil ended up exactly where she wanted. Even then, the first one got way closer than they did before.

So, it was time to enact the last part of her plan.

She needed to covertly get answers to the others.

She started by covertly making a flawless copy of her test right on top of itself, so closely that it didn’t even have to fall to the desk. From there, she performed one more experiment. Could she make any modifications to things she copied?

She stared hard at her test, and focused all of her intent on making it _nearly_ the same, but with worse, slightly larger handwriting, trying her best to visualize it.

The new copy popped into existence, once again flawlessly layered over her real test. Sure enough, the handwriting no longer looked like hers. And she'd seen Naruto's and Sasuke's handwriting, both in the Academy and because Naruto had written down his address for her that one time. Even though she didn't remember either style perfectly, she only needed semi-passable imitations. As long as it wasn't blatantly _her_ penmanship, it'd likely be fine.

With utmost care, and a couple of painstaking minutes of effort that had to _seem_ totally effortless and inconspicuous, she directed two more test copies to pop into existence _directly_ on top of Naruto's and Sasuke's, so closely that they wouldn't flutter or shift suspiciously from falling a small distance. She carefully made them one at a time, each modified to have their names and rough approximations of their handwriting.

Satisfied with herself, she only had to worry that they were actually still legible. She could vaguely sense them, but she couldn't see them.

Hopefully, everything would be fine.

Well, it was, just for _none_ of the reasons Sakura had expected.

* * *

After busting her ass to answer the questions fairly and _then_ quickly and covertly devise personally untested variants on a jutsu that she wasn’t even sure would work, all to cheat on behalf of her team members, it turned out that all nine of the first questions just _didn't fucking matter._

Sakura wanted to throw her chair out the window and then sock Ibiki square in the jaw.

All that _really_ fucking mattered, apparently, was a correct answer to the tenth question, which was just a trick question made to test willingness to face the unknown regardless of risk.

Sakura kind of understood, but at the same time, that was _such monumental bullshit_ that she felt like she could scream for a year straight.

If the entire first segment of the test was for testing your ability to gather information, didn't that basically kind of prove that the actual right thing to do as a ninja who didn't know something was _not_ to just charge in and hope for the best, but to _actually try to discern more information first, and ensure that your teammates knew it too?_

 _Where the fuck_ were any of them supposed to get any prior knowledge about the nature of the tenth question? If Ibiki had it written down somewhere, he’d made no allusions to it whatsoever. There were no hints anywhere, to her knowledge. Unless they were supposed to covertly steal it off of him without even knowing about it existing, which was _stupid. Maybe_ prior chuunin and jonin had the information and someone could've somehow learned about it before the exam started, but she really doubted that that was how they were supposed to go about it. Their tests probably weren't even the same.

Sakura silently fumed in spite of the triumph, especially because it was no longer even because of her that they'd pulled through. Sure, Naruto's bravery could admittedly be pretty cool when he wasn't being stupid, but did all of her thinking and planning really have to amount to _nothing?!_

Reckless fearlessness wasn't the only fucking virtue in the world! In fact, being too brave could just get you killed! Gods, did some unknown relative of Naruto's design that stupid fucking tenth question?! It'd make sense, given that he was the main reason they passed!

Wasn't the whole point of being a chuunin that you became someone capable of leading a team and being in charge of people's lives?! Why the hell would Konoha prefer someone reckless over someone careful and observant for it, then?! She could see if _both_ parts of the test were actually important, she could see if being brave but _also_ intelligent and careful was what they wanted, but they were only rewarding one thing! And the other thing had still been punished for being done sloppily, only to turn out to have no corresponding reward! You could just do nothing and then pass with the last question alone! What a fucking stupid design! When _she_ stood back and did nothing on a _real_ mission, Kakashi almost died, and then Sasuke almost died! What kind of lesson was that to be teaching people?!

You couldn't just keep desperately throwing the bravest people you had at problems and hoping they went away! Any cannon fodder could decide to just charge recklessly into the unknown! Even worse, the question had been designed so that everyone thought the punishment for getting it wrong was more severe than just not trying! 

Sakura knew she was still naive, but really, wasn't it much more common and appropriate to simply decide not to do something like that in a _practical_ situation, _even for_ a ninja? They weren't at war anymore. Yes, there were situations that called for utmost bravery and immediate action, but there were also _tons_ of situations where you did in fact have the time and opportunity to regroup or at least pause for a moment to try to come up with better plans and more resources, and rushing in would just be _stupid._ No one had even really gotten a chance to talk it over with their teams first!

No wonder no one else figured out her Mokuton methodology, not because they were all too stupid and untalented, but because Konoha itself didn’t seem to _care_ about fostering the required mindset to begin with. It seemed like Konoha's first test was outright _discouraging_ intellectualism, risk assessment, and subterfuge in favor of positing that just being headstrong was somehow enough.

Even though Sakura didn’t want the later segments of the exams to be too hard, she also really hoped that they had some kind of surprise in later parts of the test that would prove it was just another misleading setup and that it only _seemed_ like that was the lesson, because otherwise that was just shitty reasoning all around.

Maybe it was designed to get anyone who got by on pure guts feeling cocky, and then later on there'd be a wake-up call to catch them off guard. She wasn't sure.

Either way, they were all given a couple of hours before some undisclosed second phase of the test would begin, only being told to meet up at training ground 44 at a certain time with no further detail.

Before then, Sakura briefly re-convened with the team just outside of the exam building, revealing to them what she'd done for the first nine questions.

"Woah, that was you?! I knew it! You're so smart, Sakura-chan! I was a little worried you were still mad at me 'cause of… you know, earlier," Naruto said, voice getting quieter and just a touch timid towards the latter half.

Sakura paused for a moment, swallowing a bit awkwardly as she tried to choose her words carefully. "Well, the reason I was doesn't have anything to do with this situation, so I didn't want to just let you suffer," was what she ultimately decided on. "The plan mostly worked because you're the one who showed me the shadow clone technique, and I just modified it a little... so, thank you for that, Naruto," she said. Part of her _wanted_ to apologize, but it was so uncomfortable and _recent._ She didn't even know what she wanted to _say_ without sounding stupid or somehow making it worse, or unintentionally invalidating the parts she still felt she was right about. By settling for thanking him for something else, maybe that would at least cheer him up until she actually worked up the courage. Fortunately, it seemed like it kind of worked, because Naruto gave her a genuine smile in response to her gratitude.

"Thanks, but I didn't need your help, Sakura," Sasuke flatly told her, looking at her only briefly before putting his hands in his pockets and turning away. "I was just using my Sharingan anyway." he said.

There wasn't really any bite to it, he was more stating something neutrally than actually critiquing her, but Sakura couldn't help but feel a little disappointed regardless. Couldn't he be at least a little happier or more impressed about it? Then again, it wasn't like it really even _mattered,_ in the end.  
  
At least Kakashi briefly met up with them to praise them for a job well done, which had Sakura briefly on cloud nine. Still, that was mostly dampened by how frustratingly quiet he was on the matter of trying to get him to spill anything he could possibly know about the second part of the exam. Sakura quickly gathered that their teachers obviously weren't supposed to tell them anything either.

* * *

Once that was over, Sakura begrudgingly went home for that stretch of time, since it was the most practical option for getting something to eat and making sure she had any supplies she _might_ need, even if her mom was probably going to be there.

Once Sakura was home, she made a filling and sizable but relatively simple lunch. Apparently, even _that_ much was enough to bring down the judgment of her mother, who also entered the kitchen just to get herself a couple of apples.  
  
“Sakura, dear, are you sure you should be eating all that? You _are_ starting to put on weight, honey...” Mebuki Haruno asked, her voice dripping with that special “polite” tone that told you that you didn’t have a right to get mad at her, because she’d been “nice” about whatever she said and that automatically meant you were “overreacting”. Sakura rolled her eyes.  
  
“It’s not even junk food, so… As a matter of fact, I _am_ sure, _Mom,”_ Sakura somewhat grouchily replied, trying to summon as much contrarian spite as possible to keep herself from once again internally screaming at herself over weighing a ‘whopping’ 43.5 kilos and eating portions so much larger than she did only six months prior. She was actually in the best shape of her life, and she constantly had to keep that in mind.

But even so, it was still just a stir fry of chicken and vegetables, with rice and a side of miso soup. Hardly anything to rightfully be feeling guilty about.  
  
“Don’t get mouthy with me! I’m only _concerned_ for you, Sakura!” Mebuki replied.  
  
“Yeah, and that’s why you barely even reacted to me taking the Chuunin Exams…” Sakura flatly replied, angrily taking another bite of her meal.  
  
“Sakura, we talked about this! You’re not ready! Don’t rush into things just to impress that Sasuke boy!” Mebuki replied. “I didn’t say much because I don’t want to encourage you to go doing something so ridiculous!”  
  
Sakura herself had wondered if she was really ready too, but hearing her mother be so dismissive without even missing a beat filled her with even more contrarian spite alarmingly quickly.  
  
She did her best to remain outwardly calm, but she did very deliberately get up and go to the cabinet for the chocolate chip cookies, while not breaking eye contact with her mother.   
  
“Sakura,” Mebuki said, in a warning tone.  
  
“I’ve already passed the first stage of the exam, mom. That was _today. We talked about this,”_ she said, miming her words and her tone on the last part. “So these are _celebratory_ cookies,” she said. staring her mother right in the eyes as she ate one without even actually finishing her food first. The Haruno family was a stickler for rules. No dessert until after you eat.  
  
Mebuki seemed to know it was a trap. Openly call out the cookies, get called out for “forgetting” about the exams. Because Sakura knew full well she didn’t _really_ forget. She just liked to ignore and tune out everything that didn’t suit her, then freak out and act like _you_ were the one in the wrong.

So, Mebuki chose a different tactic: Guilt.

"How inconsiderate. Your poor old mother just wants you to stay safe, and you still go behind her back like this… Didn't I raise you better?" Mebuki asked.

"I didn't do that. I was allowed to make my own decisions regarding the exams. It was never necessary to get parental permission to start with," Sakura said, voice held almost eerily calm before she very conspicuously ate another cookie. She also had the whole pack of them with her at once, which was really another no-no. Honestly, Sakura didn’t even _like_ interrupting a savory meal with a sudden, jarring shift to dessert right in the middle of it, but she just needed some kind of unspoken way of being difficult.

"So you just toss me aside the moment you think you're grown, is that it?" Mebuki asked, crossing her arms and frowning more and more by the moment.

"That's not what I'm saying, and you know it!" Sakura huffily replied. "I only stated a fact! I never said that I'm tossing you aside!"

"You may as well have," Mebuki coldly replied. Sakura once again rolled her eyes, which only frustrated Mebuki further. "You may be a kunoichi now, but you are still my daughter and still a child!"

"I know that! It's just that I was _also_ saying that I'm still at least considered legally independent enough to not need your permission!" Sakura replied, feeling her irritation rise by the second.

"Well, maybe don't say things with such an _attitude_ , and I wouldn't complain!" Mebuki replied.

Sakura's right eye twitched. She'd tried to explain what she’d actually meant _twice,_ and her mom was _still_ being difficult?! Regardless, she forced herself to take a deep breath, really not in the mood to escalate.

"Sorry, Mom," Sakura said quietly, trying to use the most neutral tone she could even though she secretly felt she didn't need to be apologizing. The "apology" was purely in the hopes it'd shut her up.

Thankfully, it did seem to mollify the woman quite well, as she smiled and calmed a bit. "Well, I suppose it's alright _this_ time... But _honestly,_ dear, you have to be careful! How would I look if my poor daughter died in those Chuunin Exams?! And I've told you before, when _I_ tried them, the bastards rigged the whole thing against me and my old team! Oh, and that quack sensei of ours! It burns me up just thinking about him!"

Sakura just gave a placating half-smile. She'd heard the story before. Her mom's team failed in the first round, _twice._ Honestly, the scenarios sounded harsh, but more or less fair to everyone involved.

Inner suspected that her mother was just bitter that Sakura was currently standing a better chance of making chuunin than her

Sakura didn't want to think about that too much, especially since it sounded like a pretty egotistical assumption to make.

Ever since that time when Sakura had thoughtlessly insulted Naruto for being an orphan, on top of her recent guilt over how aggressive and mean she could be, Sakura really didn't _want_ to dislike her parents. She _wanted_ to be grateful for them, she really did. They were just… _difficult_ , sometimes.

"Well, at least they didn't sabotage _you_ for having that demonic little helion on your team," Mebuki said. "Although I still wish they'd reassign you. _My_ daughter, on a team with that no-good freak? Oh, it's just so _embarrassing_!"

The corners of Sakura's mouth briefly twinged into a frown, as much as she tried to approach her mother's words calmly.

"He's not _that_ bad, Mom… I mean, yeah, he's really annoying sometimes, but he ended up being most of the reason why we passed this first test, and I have to admit he's pretty strong," Sakura replied.

"Now, now, don't let that little demon brainwash you, hon," Mebuki said, lightheartedly, almost teasingly, but with a touch of true warning, as her gaze hardened a bit at the end. "I raised you better."

"I mean, _demon_ is a little dramatic," Sakura replied, forcing a chuckle. "I'd like to think we are at least friends. If anything, I feel like sometimes I'm too hard on him," Sakura hesitantly admitted. Her mother _did_ often carry on about supposedly wanting Sakura to open up to her more.

"It's really not," Mebuki replied, in a tone so _odd_ that Sakura did a double take.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked quickly, immediately both curious and suspicious.

"I hope you don't find out," Mebuki all too casually replied, while quickly slicing up her apples, which only made Sakura even _more_ curious. She also idly noted how _annoying_ it was that her mother skinned them but always insisted that Sakura needed to eat them with the skin, ‘for the nutrients’, but she put that aside a moment later.

 _There was something going on there_ , and it was a hell of a lot more important than silly rules that the enforcer didn’t even follow.

"Mom, there's no need to be so ominous," Sakura said with another forced chuckle, forcing her tone to stay light. "Naruto's really not _that_ bad when you get to know him,"

It was such a weird situation. Sakura could feel herself getting agitated over all the dismissive callousness towards Naruto, but-

Was it because she genuinely cared, or was it just because she generally tended to be a defensive contrarian wherever her mother was involved?

" _So_ yo _u're basically asking if you're an okay person or a bratty little self-serving bitch, huh? Oh, that's_ **_rich_ ** _,"_ Inner sneered. Sakura did her best to ignore her.

Mebuki just glared at her for a moment, the look full of a hundred different little warnings. Sakura felt frozen in time, at least until her mother finally spoke.  
  
“Maybe you should make chuunin after all. Then you’ll be off that little brat’s team, and I won’t have to hear you kissing up to him for no reason. And then you can go back to focusing more on getting that appetite back under control, too…”  
  
“It literally wasn’t practical to eat the way I did before, Mom,” Sakura said, in a voice like she was explaining something to a kindergartner and not her own mother.  
  
“Not for a girl with no willpower, I suppose…” Mebuki mumbled.  
  
“What?!” Sakura snapped, shooting her mother an intense glare.  
  
“I was only kidding! Goodness, so touchy these days!” Mebuki replied with a chuckle. “But I suppose this is just something your sensei told you to do… Eh, judging by that nasty Wave mission of yours, he’s probably just another quack when it comes to teaching. He wouldn’t understand how things work for women, either way,” she said with a shrug.  
  
Sakura fought the urge to scowl with all her might, knowing it would come back to bite her if she gave in. There it was again! Her thinking she could say whatever the hell she wanted, just because she was either “joking” or “worried about her”! And throwing Kakashi-sensei under the bus, too! She barely even _knew_ him!

Sakura kept quiet after that, not only quickly finishing her meal, but eating the portion she was actually planning to save for later, out of further irritation. Fortunately, her mother left the kitchen soon enough, taking her stupid, perfectly peeled apple slices with her.

She packed for whatever the next test would be quickly after that, not wanting to linger too long and risk getting sucked into some other petty argument that’d probably end up making her late if she gave in.  
  
Whatever the second test was, she supposed it was still preferable to dealing with that damned mother of hers any longer.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t actually remember there being any intermission between the first and second test, but I added a short one just because I think this segment with Sakura and her mother was important for things coming later. Even if it was mildly infuriating to write, and I kinda wanna kick Mebuki’s teeth in now. 
> 
> Hopefully, I didn't overdo it, because I didn't want to feel like I was being a tryhard about it, or trying to shoehorn Sakura into being the most tragic person in the whole world. 
> 
> While I do feel it's a little trite of me to fall back on "Sakura's got bad parents", I felt like I either had to do it, or I had to retcon "Sakura shits on Naruto for being an orphan" out of the fic's modified canon. The latter felt like it would be a cop-out at this point. It wouldn't change how she canonically hardly ever talks, thinks, or worries about her parents otherwise, and the flaws leading her to do it are present either way.
> 
> And otherwise, if Sakura's parents are okay people and she said that regardless… That's just an awful look, and it makes her all the harder to root for. She needs at least a little of an explanation for saying something that bad.
> 
> Also, bad parents feel like a better explanation in general for all the times she's honestly just a shitty person, since “she’s 12” really only goes so far when I’ve known plenty of 12 year olds who wouldn’t be that mean. Even canonically, they can't be all that great if they presumably hate Naruto just like most of the other adults.
> 
> Once again, I really see the merits of those "everyone on Team 7 is nicer from the start" kinds of fics now.
> 
> At the very least, Sakura gets to be perceptive enough to partly figure out what's going on with the test now. 'Cause I said so.
> 
> I really do think that test was a load of crap. Imo, from a meta perspective, it was just written that way so that Naruto can ultimately look cool even in a situation that's supposed to be his weakest area. I didn’t change it though, because this anger and disillusionment on Sakura’s part is something I can use to my advantage later… *rubs hands together and chuckles darkly*
> 
> For a serious reason, I always felt like Sakura's supposed "intellect" in canon is kinda half-assed anyway. Most of it is simply us being told "oh, you have to be really smart to do that, trust us,", when usually she’s not really allowed to contribute with important insights, and she's not typically shown to be that great with strategy, subterfuge, or high-pressure situations. Her Sasori fight is an exception to some debatable extent, but you can argue quite a bit about how much should and shouldn’t be attributed to Chiyo. Even that’s annoying, because it’s like Kishimoto just wrote it to check off some stuff on a list and then proceeded to go right back to making Sakura underwhelming for most of Shippuden.
> 
> Also, you know how there really is a shadow clone technique for objects only, and yet it's said to be somehow harder than the normal technique? What's up with that? How is a fully functioning human copy less difficult than inanimate objects?
> 
> My explanation to myself is that it's a chakra control issue, mainly, and that it's easier to totally overshoot the jutsu and destabilize it because you're using so much less chakra on this variant... but I still think the logic of self-cloning being easier than object-only cloning as long as you have the chakra is kinda wack. Oh well.


End file.
